Saturday, March 7, 2009

News and Links

At last, some news! Here's what happening in the Dark Shadows world...
  • MGM have reissued their 1991 Dark Shadows revival series DVD with a new cover design. Unfortunately, the episodes are still presented in widescreen, rather than their native 4:3 picture format, but this remains the only official release available. To order the set from Amazon, click here.
  • Fans of the Dark Shadows movies have a wait ahead of them for a release on DVD. The current plan is to issue the films to tie in with the debut of the Johnny Depp Dark Shadows movie project, which is unlikely to happen before the end of 2010.
  • The ShadowGram newsletter has unveiled its official website, which will feature Dark Shadows news updates and actor information. To access it, click here.
  • As his new film Confessions of a Shopaholic hits cinemas, The Australian has published a profile of director PJ Hogan, who helmed the ill-fated 2004 Dark Shadows pilot. To read the article, click here.
  • And, finally, not exactly news, but here's a fascinating webpage from Dark Shadows fan and antique dealer Vince Garcia, detailing the history of Quentin's gramophone prop, with trivia and photographs. Pay a visit by clicking here.

3 comments:

James said...

Out of extreme curiosity, does anybody know a reason why MGM decided to spend a couple of extra dollars to release the 1991 DVD with a new cover? MGM cut costs ie... not including any extras, not cleaning the print, wrong format, when they first released the DVD. So why now have they decided to actually spend additional money on the new cover? Is it remotely possible that MGM sold out of its initial run? I doubt that.

StuartM said...

Actually, I think it is just because the original pressing has sold out, as that edition is now deleted. It looks like they've just re-formatted it for a different style of packaging, which is pretty standard practice across the industry.

Daniel Ziegler said...

I think it worth noting that the advertised running time is also just 592 minutes just as the previous release, so it won't include the extra footage that was included on some of the episodes on the MPI VHS tapes.