more on ultraman 1966 us dvd release

[Gigan71]

[MouthForWar]

[Robert Saint John]

Now that it's been released (and this thread has become 20+ pages), I've started for the discussion of this and the future release from BCI. I won't close this thread yet, but try to post any new comments, reviews, screencaps, etc. in the new thread. Thanks!

[MouthForWar]

Since this thread is now more for the legal discussions than the actual DVDs, I thought some people might be interested to read legal issues part of the interview with BCI from Henshin a few months back. And I thought I might as well post it here for easy access/reference in the future.

H!O: When did you decide to pursue ULTRAMAN, and were you aware of the on-going problems between Tsuburaya Productions of Tokyo and Chaiyo Productions of Thailand?

CM: ULTRAMAN first was brought to me from a sales rep when I was at Ventura, but they told me that the first six series were in litigation and were unavailable. Since those were the shows that I knew the fans really wanted, I didn't pursue the Tsuburaya Productions library while at Ventura, though I did think real hard about doing ARMY OF THE APES [Saru-no Gundan, 1974-75].

H!O: Amazing. I'm sure that it would find a following besides the MST3K fanbase who froth over the Sandy Frank movie version: TIME OF THE APES; you'd also have fans of the original PLANET OF THE APES as possible buyers... The series was recently remastered for DVD release in Japan - it would be cool to see this eventually released in the States.

CM: Yeah, I really would have loved to release the series... When I got to BCI, I had a friend talk to Tsuburaya about the original ULTRAMAN series. He was told that the US video rights were now with a Thai company. We had a friend in Thailand locate the company and we began talks on acquiring the series.

H!O: Because of this on-going dispute, what kind of checking into the rights was performed and who was responsible for these procedures?

CM: Well, the litigation between the two companies concerned us. As a public company, we didn't want to acquire something that would end up in further litigation, so we had our lawyers and the sales agent that acquired the title from Chaiyo read all the documents from the courts in Japan.

H!O: Are your lawyers who read these documents located in Los Angeles or Thailand?

CM: Our lawyer is in Los Angeles, and the person who read all the Japanese court documents speaks fluent Japanese.

H!O: How do you feel about Tsuburaya Productions' situation in all of this?

CM: I would much rather be working with Tsuburaya. No doubt about it.

I think our release would be more complete having the creators of the show work with us to create our DVD release. I think it's unfortunate that the creators of the show do not have the rights to their creation, but as a fan of the show, I wanted to see it get a Region 1 release and the people that had the rights were Chaiyo.

H!O: Now, I'd like to talk about some technical aspects that fans might be keen on; what source are you using for the video masters for BCI's release of ULTRAMAN?

CM: Chaiyo has furnished us with masters. I am assuming the master originated from Tsuburaya, but I really don't know for sure. They look pretty good.

H!O: Are these discs going to be dual language?

CM: Yes, we will have the original Japanese language version with new subtitles and the English dubbed track.

H!O: What kind of restoration work is being done in regards to the original English soundtrack?

CM: The English track was hard to find. We are working to clean it up a bit, but the original tracks no longer exist in the United Artists' vaults. We looked for them.

H!O: Just for the record, in the early 1990s, when United Artists Television's rights elapsed, Tsuburaya Productions' former Los Angeles office, Ultracom Inc., located all of the original masters and returned them to the Tokyo office. These included the English, Spanish and French tracks produced by Peter Fernandez at Titra Studios. If I remember correctly, the English tracks were transferred to DAT by Brad Warner of Tsuburaya Productions' International Department.

CM: Yes, I know Tsuburaya has the dubs, but I doubt they will give them to us.

H!O: How will the series be presented and when can consumers expect to see them in retail shops?

CM: We are going to split the 39 episodes into two releases to make it more affordable. There are so many cool releases on DVD these days, it's hard to buy everything you want, so I thought if I split it into two sets, it would make it easier on the fan's DVD budget. I know I can't afford everything I want to buy these days. I'm sure some fans would rather have the whole thing in one box set but the releases will only be 60 days apart.

The first set will be released in July around the time of the San Diego Comic Con and the second release will hit stores in September.

Both sets will have some bonus features and each set will contain two collectible art cards like our HE-MAN sets. As I mentioned, it would have been awesome to work with Tsuburaya on this release, but unfortunately, the rights exist with Chaiyo and the two sets won't have all the cool stuff on the Japanese releases, but we will still try to create something that the fans will appreciate. This is the only way a Region 1 release was ever going to happen and we will still create something better than the bootlegs available here in the US, which can be found all over the internet.

[Robert Saint John]

For the sake of credit, I'd like to note that the above piece was written by August Ragone and is currently posted at H!O at http://www.henshinonline.com/ .

[Gigan71]

[Shonokin]

[Gigan71]