"Transformers: Age of Extinction" Coming to BluRay 3D

Paramount has announced that those pesky robots that just won't go away will be invading our living rooms once again in 3D.  Below is the press release for "Transformers: Age of Extinction."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

THE YEAR’S #1 MOVIE IN THE WORLD ARRIVES ON
BLU-RAY 3D™ & BLU-RAY™ COMBO PACKS WITH
OVER THREE HOURS OF EXPLOSIVE SPECIAL FEATURES

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

$1 Billion Global Smash Hit Debuts on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD & VOD September 30, 2014

Own the Must-See Blockbuster of the Year Two Weeks Early on Digital HD September 16 

(August 26, 2014) – From director Michael Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg and in association with Hasbro, Inc.,  Paramount Pictures’ $1 billion worldwide blockbuster Transformers: Age of Extinction makes its highly-anticipated debut September 30, 2014 on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD and VOD. The film will be available to own two weeks earlier on Digital HD September 16, 2014.     The Transformers: Age of Extinction four-disc Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack and three-disc Blu-ray Combo Pack feature more than three hours of illuminating bonus content. From selecting fierce new cars and designing new TRANSFORMERS characters to constructing elaborately detailed sets, this comprehensive footage truly takes viewers inside the fun, hard work and excitement of making an electrifying global blockbuster film.      The spectacular Combo Packs also include an in-depth interview with Michael Bay about his approach to the film’s jaw-dropping action sequences, a crash course on the “Bayhem” of being on set for the massive, global production, a revealing look at the design process inside Hasbro Headquarters, and more. Plus there’s even more than meets the eye with the hilarious TRANSFORMERS KREON trailer where KREON figures take you through all of the blockbuster TRANSFORMERS movies. In addition, the Combo Packs include a brand new Angry Bird TRANSFORMERS trailer where birds and pigs turn into Autobots and Deceptihogs, creating havoc on Piggy Island. The Blu-ray 3D includes expanded images as seen in IMAX™ theaters. Blu-ray Combo Pack       The Transformers: Age of Extinction Blu-ray is presented in 1080p high definition with English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD, English 5.1 Discrete Dolby Digital, English 2.0 Discrete Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Portuguese 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The English 5.1 and English 2.0 tracks were each individually mastered to ensure optimal sound for the home entertainment experience.       The DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with English 5.1 Dolby Digital, English 2.0 Discrete Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The disc breakdown is as follows: Disc 1 (Blu-ray):       ·       Feature film in high definition Disc 2 (Blu-ray):       ·      Bay On Action—In-depth interview with Michael Bay about his vision and approach to the film’s mind-blowing action sequences.       ·       Evolution Within Extinction:                  o       Generation 2—A look at where the fourth film picks up as we meet new faces—both man and machine—and a Transformers world after the Battle of Chicago.                  o       Drive Like Hell—Two entirely re-envisioned models of OPTIMUS PRIME and BUMBLEBEE appear in the film, along with an intimidating new nemesis, LOCKDOWN, as a Lamborghini Aventador plus other incredibly cool cars including a sophisticated Bugatti Veyron and a sleek Pagani Huayra. Check them out and see how actor Jack Reynor learned how to drive his Sonic rally car for the intense chase sequences.                  o       Small Town, Big Movie— When Transformers rolls into some small Texas towns, the normally quiet and picturesque countryside is suddenly alight with explosive action. Explore the different locations with members of the show's art department and hear from robotics students whose designs appear as part of Cade’s lab.                  o       Shadow Protocol Activated— Follow the production to Detroit with unprecedented access to GM's Lansing plant and Milford Proving Grounds test track; watch an impressive indoor car chase created in an auto parts factory; return to Chicago where location managers discovered a historical movie theater that served as the backdrop for Cade’s fateful first encounter with OPTIMUS PRIME; and finally travel to Washington state and the unlikely site of a never-used nuclear power plant.                 o       The Last Stand—A vacant lot in downtown Detroit is turned into a square block of Hong Kong. Watch as it literally takes shape from the ground up—then marvel as the crew blows it up piece by piece.                 o       The People’s Republic— China plays an extremely prominent role in the film both on-screen and behind-the-scenes; in fact, four Chinese actors were chosen from thousands of applicants on a reality TV show to appear in the movie. In addition, the production traveled to Hong Kong, the beautiful valley of Wulong Karst National Park in Chongqing and the Great Wall in Beijing to capture breathtaking footage.                 o       Rise of the DINOBOTS—Several new TRANSFORMERS characters make their live-action debut in this film. Get a brief history of the new recruits and then go inside Industrial Light & Magic to see how they were designed and conceptualized for the film.                 o       The Finishing Touch— Watch Michael Bay work like you’ve never seen him before. The director connects virtually with his Santa Monica headquarters, visits the editing bay and then checks in on the visual effects house in San Francisco—all from the comfort of his Miami home office. Also, get an in-depth look at the music contributions of Imagine Dragons as they collaborate with the film's composer Steve Jablonsky. Finally, get exclusive red carpet access to the film's world premiere in Hong Kong.       ·      Just Another Giant Effin’ Movie—Discover the fun, frenetic and amazing way a movie like Transformers: Age of Extinction gets made.       ·      A Spark of Design— Enjoy an exclusive look inside Hasbro's creation of TRANSFORMERS: Age of Extinction Stomp and Chomp Grimlock action figure from concept and development to sculpting and painting, and then ultimately to the assembly line.       ·      T.J. Miller: Farm Hippie — Actor/comedian T.J. Miller never imagined he’d be part of a massively successful franchise like Transformers so he sets off to personally thank the people who made it possible. Come along as he visits Bay Films, gets some pointers from Kelsey Grammer, and even stops by Mark Wahlberg’s house in this funny piece.       ·      KRE-O TRANSFORMERS: Take Us Through the Movies! – OPTIMUS PRIME will bring you up to speed on all of the TRANSFORMERS movies one by one in this hilarious, animated short where the TRANSFORMERS KREON figures act out the movies while building and rebuilding each scene…brick by brick.       ·      The Angry Birds TRANSFORMERS: Origin Story - Bonus content tells the origin story of how the EggSpark has landed on Piggy Island causing the eggs on the island to turn into evil Egg-bots, wreaking havoc across the whole island. The EggSpark has also caused the Birds and Pigs to turn into Autobots and Deceptihogs, who must team up in order to stop the Egg-bots before it's too late!       ·      Trailers Disc 3 (DVD):       ·       Feature film in standard definition Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack       The Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack includes all of the above, as well as a Blu-ray 3D with expanded images as seen in IMAX theaters presented in 1080p high definition, English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD, English 5.1 Discrete Dolby Digital, English 2.0 Discrete Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Portuguese 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The English 5.1 and English 2.0 tracks were each individually mastered to ensure optimal sound for the home entertainment experience.       The Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack and Blu-ray Combo Pack available for purchase include a Digital Version of the film that can be accessed through UltraViolet™, a new way to collect, access and enjoy movies. With UltraViolet, consumers can add movies to their digital collection in the cloud, and then stream or download them—reliably and securely—to a variety of devices. DVD       The Transformers: Age of Extinction DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with English 5.1 Dolby Digital, English 2.0 Discrete Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The disc includes the feature film in standard definition.

Read more »

Disney Officially Backing off on 3D

I would have reported this several days ago, but the sad news of Robin Williams passing away took a toll on me and I feel behind on my writing.  Thankfully writing is very therapeutic for me, so after I wrote an obituary of sorts for one of my favorite actors I took a few days off and resumed work.  I also remembered that on Monday the Digital Bits more or less confirmed some of our fears:

On a related note, Disney seems to have backed away from their commitment to Blu-ray 3D, releasing only select theatrical 3D titles on the format, often only in Europe or in the U.S. as retail exclusives. Probably, this is the studio attempting to save a buck and get its retail partners to pay for 3D when they can. This is a shame, because while we know the audience for Blu-ray 3D is limited, it is a very dedicated enthusiast audience eager for more BD3D content.

This is disappointing but not really surprising.  The lack of BluRay 3D releases from Disney is the main reason I started to put this site together in the first place.  So now we pretty much have confirmation that Disney - who used to be one of BluRay 3D's biggest supporters - is backing off on the format.  Of course, it should be noted that Disney is likely doing this to save a few pennies.  They have also discontinued the popular combo packs for most of their movies.  So no more DVD's in the BluRay sets.  Just a digital copy.  Oh, and while those digital copies used to be redeemable at iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu, starting with "Muppets Most Wanted" it appears you can only redeem them on one service: Disney Movies Anywhere.  You can certainly see the Mouses attempt to control the movies you "buy" these days.

Let's get back to BluRay 3D though.  Bill Hunt thinks that another reason Disney has cooled on the releases is that Disney wants to sell the 3D version as retailer exclusives to get someone else to foot the bill for the disks.  That actually sounds like a really nice dream because it would be better than nothing.  But no, I don't think this is the case.  If it was then they are doing a VERY poor job at this!  This is the sort of thing Amazon and Best Buy get into bidding wars over.  Yeah, it's a niche product, but if you're the only retailer who has the product then you officially own a monopoly on that whole market for that movie.  Who wouldn't want to have that for "Frozen?"  We'll be speaking more about this in the near future.  For now though, start writing those letters to Disney and continue flooding their Facebook and Twitter page.

Read more »

MIA This Week: "Tarzan: The Legend Lives"

This week see's the release of a movie that may have slipped under the radar for most of you when it was in theaters: "Tarzan: The Legend Lives."  It was a co-production between America, Germany, and France, proving once again that peace doesn't always lead to prosperity.  The film received poor reviews from critics (18% on Rotten Tomatoes) and the 3D was especially trashed by one critic.  Being an animated film I have a hard time believing the 3D can be that bad.  Animation tends to lend itself better to 3D than everything else, even for poor movies like "The Nut Job."  This was a box office bomb and the movie is exclusively available at Wal-Mart.  Since they are the exclusive carriers you'd think they'd include the BluRay 3D as well.  Turns out that isn't the case.  I mean, they may have ultimately done us a favor if the 3D is as bad as they say, but why not press the disk and let consumers (what few there likely are for this film) choose for themselves?

Read more »

No "Maleficent" on BluRay 3D From Disney (And Welcome to the Site)

From Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits we have our first real confirmation that Disney has no plans to release "Maleficent" on BluRay 3D in America.  Like "Frozen" and "Need for Speed" though, you can get BluRay 3D versions from the U.K., China, and pretty much all other international territories that Disney ships disks to.  There is no word on whether or not the 3D version will be a streaming exclusively through Vudu, but considering that's been the case for the aforementioned films there is a good chance of this.  Thus Disney remains the most high profile studio in America to give 3D the shaft to their consumers.  This is all the more ironic since on the same day Paramount Studios began taking pre-orders for Brett Rattner's "Hercules" on BluRay 3D.  This is ironic because the film is neither as popular as "Maleficent" was nor did it garner much interest from the public (the movie only opened last week).

Hi everyone, my name is Kevin T. Rodriguez, and welcome to my new blog "Save BluRay 3D."  This is pretty much our first news post here as a take a step away from my reviews and column writing to follow news and releases on the BluRay 3D market.  It's fitting that "Maleficent" is the first news story to post about here since it was the main inspiration for creating the site in the first place.  Keep in mind that I don't think "Maleficent" is a good movie by any real stretch, but for me the rumor of this movie not getting a BluRay 3D release in America was enough to get me started on the site.  While it is true that 3D has been slow to be adapted into the home there are none-the-less a decent, dedicated section of film lovers who do enjoy movies with good 3D that can enhance the film.

For a small period of time there was a big push to get all the latest 3D movies onto disks as soon as possible.  Disney was actually one of the biggest supporters of the format just a couple of short years ago.  Recently there have been a shift where some movies that had 3D versions (or worse, were made in 3D) were not getting BluRay 3D releases.  Small movies like "Free Birds" and "One Direction: This Is Us" were made with 3D in mind, but because those movies weren't that big (or whatever reason) they only got standard 2D BluRay releases in America.  This really didn't concern me until Disney made the unpopular choice to cancel the BluRay 3D release of "Frozen" in America.  I had a long YouTube rant you can watch here, but the idea to hold off on one of the biggest 3D movies in years was a truly baffling move to many of us.

"Frozen" was one of the biggest 3D hits theaters had the previous year along with "Gravity," and those two movies alone helped the format regain some love after many hastily converted 3D films made people tired of the format.  Warner Bros. ended up releasing "Gravity" on BluRay 3D where it became the best selling BluRay 3D of all time.  To top it all off, thanks to recent strong sales from other big 3D titles, BluRay 3D disks are likely to account for 35% of BluRay disks sales.  Because of this it was certainly disheartening to see such a big company not give consumers the option to buy one of their biggest hits in years in 3D if they so wished to buy it as such.  Then the upcoming Tinker Bell movie they made in 3D was not released on BluRay 3D, then "Need for Speed's" 3D was canned on disk, and now "Maleficent" is out.  We're still getting "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" on BluRay 3D in America though, so it's not all bad.

Still, even though I wouldn't have bought these movies on any format it's a shame to think that the studios might start abandoning BluRay 3D's just because they are slightly more expensive than regular BluRay's and not as common (just as the market is on the verge of financially supporting them to boot).  As much as everyone loves streaming, regulating the 3D versions to streams is the worst thing to do because most bandwidth (even in the comfy LA area...where yours truly lives) simply doesn't support it.  No, I want to see that if a movie was available in 3D in theaters, that it be available in 3D on disk as well.  Because this was a recent thing I wanted to try you might notice the site (nice as it looks so far) is incomplete.  A lot of links don't work yet and some of our biggest features have yet to be uploaded.

In the very near future though we plan to have a comprehensive list of 3D movies in theaters that have not been released on BluRay 3D (it's a small list now, but I wanted to make it quick before it potentially got big).  We'll of course report when 3D movies have BluRay 3D releases announced and when the announcement is absent.  We're going to grade the studios at the end of every year to see if they're doing their job in getting these movies out to the general public the way they should be.  In other words, this is going to be one of those massive blogs with way more information than you could possibly want for one particular thing.  If you find yourself getting tired of reading about disk releases and whatnot, may I recommend a movie review website?

Read more »