
China release: 26th July 2019
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$2.5 Million It's an old trick used by the film distribution companies to keep a steady flow of cash coming in by re-releasing old films, and each time in a different way, whether it be in the VHS days of suddenly discovering some new footage and releasing longer or directors cuts, or the more modern way of an improved picture and more extras. When a new format come along, like Blu-ray it give a whole new life to old films, just askGeorge Lucas, he's made a mint from the idea.
Studios are now suggesting that with some of the older films it isn't financially viable to re-release them again on Blue-ray, as Bill Hunt from The Digital Bits website writes in his daily “My Two Cents” column on his site.
It seems that the public these days expecting so much from High Definition that the amount of time and money spent on the disk production doesn't justify the return resulting in many a catalogue title maybe never seeing a release in high definition.
I think many of us are in this situation, you bought the VHS version of your favourite film say, The Breakfast Club. That version cant be played with your current hardware (who has a VHS player anymore?) so you bought the DVD version and enjoy it over and over again, the pictures as crisp today as the day it was bought. You now decide to buy an HDTV and Blu-ray player and find the Blu-ray version of the film, but is it really worth another purchase when your current disk will still play in your new player, and maybe even improve it?
It's an old argument, and when it comes to big Hollywood blockbuster a really good HD remastered transfer will make a huge difference, and I as much as anyone else will be lining the pockets of Lucasfilms when the virtually announced Star Wars Blu-ray films are released, but relatively speaking the list of film I need in HD is probably quite small, although my Blu-ray collection is growing at an alarming rate.
Ghostbusters was unmistakably a good film and quite naturally a few years after the original a sequel can, the length of time between the original the it's follow up was 5 years and this was most likely down to getting all the original cast time in their schedule to film it, the result was a good film but not a patch on the original.
It's 20 years since the sequel and since then there has been more rumours of a third film than I can think of. Everything for storyline has been mention from a simple reunion of the original quartet most credible rumour being a story line which takes them to hell to an all new cast and one or two of the original crew appearing to "hand over" to a group of youngsters.
All rumours have mostly been quashed except now it seems Columbia Pictures have basically said that the 3rd film is good to go, the interesting twist being the script is not to be written by Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd, who directed and starred in the original, but by upcoming writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky who currently have on their CV's The Office.
Who writes the script is almost irrelevant really, although it has to try and be good, but really do we want a Ghostbusters 3? Maybe in the early 90's a 3rd instalment would have been good but 20 years later should we not be remembering the films and watching the originals over again to remind us how good they are? Comebacks are the thing though, Indiana Jones has just had a successful return, despite some bad reviews, The X-Files has just returned although maybe not after quite the same length of time, Star Wars enjoyed a successful return and with a name like Ghostbusters that still holds a certain amount of excitement when someone says "who you gonna call..." maybe anytime will be a good time, lets hope the memory of the originals is retained, Star Wars anyone?