Andre Yoskowitz
13 Sep 2007 10:23
After a year of speculation, New Line Cinemas has finally announced that it will be releasing its movies in HD, starting with "Hairspray" on Blu-ray in November. The studio also said the movie will be released on HD DVD in early 2008 but did not specify a date.
New Line decided to go the path of its parent company Warner by staying format neutral, making them the only two studios to support both formats.
"Clearly, there isn't a format winner at this point, so we’re going to adopt the strategy from Warner, our sister company, and mirror what they are doing," said Matt Lasorsa of New Line "And by supporting both formats, we are giving consumers the ultimate choice."
Although most insiders believed New Line would become dual-format supporters, the release of the HD DVD a few months after the Blu-ray version is surprising. Lasorsa said the delay is attributed to a lack of region coding in current HD DVDs.
"Since we sell to independent international distributors, we have to be more sensitive to their release dates than a major studio," Lasorsa added. "But for second-party acquisitions to which we don't have international rights, we will be day-and-date on all three formats."
New Line is set to make a press release soon in which it will release the specifications of the discs.
Source:
HD Digest