French Distributor MK2 Now Blu-ray Exclusive?
Posted by Dave Cowl
closeAuthor: Dave Cowl
Name: Dave Cowl
Email: dave@formatwarcentral.com
Site: http://www.blu-raystats.com
About: Originally from New Zealand, Dave now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Dave's day job
involves developing high resolution LCoS projectors.
Dave also has a strong interest in cinema and film making, and has
always been an early adopter - he still uses his Sony DVP-S7000 DVD
Player and also owns first generation Blu-ray, HD DVD and DTheater
D-VHS equipment.
Dave has been following the HD Disc format war since the beginning,
which resulted in the Blu-ray Statistics and HD DVD Statistics
websites, designed to track the studio progress with features as they
have released HD media product.See Authors Posts (314) on February 6, 2008
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, HD DVD, Studios
An anonymous French store worker has kindly sent us a scan of the release information for the next High Definition title from MK2 in France.
The movie is called Paranoid Park, the latest from director Gus Van Sant (known for directing Good Will Hunting).
The release information appears to be somewhat inaccurate, stating that the Blu-ray is a DVD9, but it is clear that there are three editions – a simple and two disc DVD release, and a Blu-ray release. There is no mention of HD DVD.
Amazon France lists the release date as April 28, 2008 and the retail price is 29.99 Euro.
MK2 has released both HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of titles in 2007, such as François Truffaut’s 400 Blows. Do we have another European distributor moving towards Blu-ray exclusivity?
Related posts:
- French Distributor BAC Films Joins the Blu-ray Trend
- German Distributor Highlight Video to Become Blu-ray Exclusive
- Amazon gets Exclusive National Geographic Blu-ray Title
- French Matrix Trilogy Announced for October 22nd?
- Spanish Distributor Cameo to Release Blu-ray Disc, Retailer Reacts
I believe MK2 is distributed by Warner in France… maybe this explains the move…
Warners choices explain many of these moves
What is really interesting to me is that it appears that Studio Canal is now distributed by Universal Music, instead of Universal Pictures.
You can see this if you look at Les Bronzes releases on Amazon.fr.
What is interesting about that? Well, Universal Music falls under the BD studio set where Universal Pictures falls under HD DVD. So, will we see a reversal of format for Studio Canal? Something to watch out for…
Dave, I for one would really really love to see such a move.
That would sure have some impact.
Haven’t there already been some news about the box set of ‘Les Bronzes” coming on Blu from Studio Canal already?
Les Bronzes Box (Blu-ray) was apparently released on Nov 19, 2007.
Amazon.fr is not showing stock, and I did hear that the distribution for Studio Canal is a bit chaotic.
Hopefully we will learn more as things settle down with the new distributors etc…