Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
A fellow from London posted what he says is the Warner Bros. preliminary schedule for next year's video releases in the U.K. The full list is at The DVD File's Software Forum if you're interested. I'll just post the important stuff here. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
The list starts with January, but only goes as far as November 2003 for some reason. You'll see why this is important in a minute. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif Naturally I scanned it for mentions of B5.
May DVD - Retail Babylon 5 Series 2
(Remember that "series" is a Britishism for what Americans would call a "season") OK, no surprise here. Even when JMS mentioned that April was the tenative R1 release date I assumed that he meant the end of the month, because that would put the release 6 months ahead of the November S3 release, and that's the pattern the studios have followed for this kind of thing. (X-Files ships in May and November each year, for instance.) So I skipped down to November. No B5. I went back to May and scanned down the list, slowly. This is what I saw:
September DVD - Retail Babylon 5 series 3
Wait a second, that's two months early. That only puts four months between releases. And it means that S4 could be released in late December 2003. Not April 2004. Which in turn means that S5 (and possibly the TV movies) could be out in the spring of 2004 instead of two full years from now. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
I wish the list had included their December releases. This is going to bug me.
Now mind you none of this is confirmed. This is a post from some guy who says he's in London, and says he has access to this list. I don't spend enough time on the DVD File Forum to have any sense of this guy. (I only found his post because somebody mentioned it on The Home Theater Forum.) Even if he and the list are both totally legitimate, people at video companies make mistakes and plans change.
But I have a feeling this may be accurate information. And that feeling is only partially based on the fact that I predicted that something like this might happen. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif Now we'll have to wait and see if I'm going to be proven right.
Still, it is a hopeful sign, and could indicate that Warner Bros. is at long last seeing the profit potential in its redheaded step-child. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
Regards,
Joe
The list starts with January, but only goes as far as November 2003 for some reason. You'll see why this is important in a minute. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif Naturally I scanned it for mentions of B5.
May DVD - Retail Babylon 5 Series 2
(Remember that "series" is a Britishism for what Americans would call a "season") OK, no surprise here. Even when JMS mentioned that April was the tenative R1 release date I assumed that he meant the end of the month, because that would put the release 6 months ahead of the November S3 release, and that's the pattern the studios have followed for this kind of thing. (X-Files ships in May and November each year, for instance.) So I skipped down to November. No B5. I went back to May and scanned down the list, slowly. This is what I saw:
September DVD - Retail Babylon 5 series 3
Wait a second, that's two months early. That only puts four months between releases. And it means that S4 could be released in late December 2003. Not April 2004. Which in turn means that S5 (and possibly the TV movies) could be out in the spring of 2004 instead of two full years from now. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
I wish the list had included their December releases. This is going to bug me.
Now mind you none of this is confirmed. This is a post from some guy who says he's in London, and says he has access to this list. I don't spend enough time on the DVD File Forum to have any sense of this guy. (I only found his post because somebody mentioned it on The Home Theater Forum.) Even if he and the list are both totally legitimate, people at video companies make mistakes and plans change.
But I have a feeling this may be accurate information. And that feeling is only partially based on the fact that I predicted that something like this might happen. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif Now we'll have to wait and see if I'm going to be proven right.
Still, it is a hopeful sign, and could indicate that Warner Bros. is at long last seeing the profit potential in its redheaded step-child. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
Regards,
Joe