Home Blog
‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Blu-ray Giveaway!
I’m very excited to announce that I have Five (5) Blu-rays of Sonic The Hedgehog up for grabs. The discs, all of which are sealed, also come with the Digital Code and the DVD! Entry details are below!
Finish Your Screenplay: Director Kevin D. Sepe On Writing ‘Elijah Peel’
Now playing in theaters, Elijah Peel is a resonate rock n’ roll tale about a music star (Robert Malcolm Cumming) whose turbulent life takes a profound turn thanks to a newfound friendship with a young girl (Evelyn Grace Kite). First time filmmaker Kevin D. Sepe talked to Deepest Dream about the big challenge of writing the screenplay through the objective lens of being both a director and producer. Did wearing several hats alter Sepe’s approach to his storytelling? Check out our full interview below!
Read more: Finish Your Screenplay: Director Kevin D. Sepe On Writing ‘Elijah Peel’
‘Elijah Peel’ Screenplay Process
“To wear (several) hats is really hard because I’m in a position of being the producer, writer, and also being the director,” said Sepe, who co-directed Elijah Peel with Nathan Ross Murphy. “Those are three completely different hats, and that was the most challenging part of this because as the producer your job is to get it all to happen. You look at the screenplay and go, “This is gonna be tough.” Within the parameters of time elements or money elements or whatever that is, you have to be able to assess that as a producer objectively saying: ‘I can’t do this. This can’t be done. This is gonna cause a problem. This is gonna take too long. Let’s condense it. Let’s do that.'”
“So I’m telling my other part of my brain to do this, it’s not like I can go to a department,” said Sepe. “And go, ‘Hey, bring this back with this.’ I then convert that to (the script). It’s a very interesting place to be where you have to actually do it.”
Analyzing his story from an objective vantage point ultimately was an advantage for the filmmaker. “When you write it, you’re writing,” said Sepe, who also produced the movie’s original soundtrack. “I just let it flow. It’s not an easy thing to do – to remove very personal things for the betterment of the film and to make it flow quicker. And to make it get to a place where you think it will be received properly and in its most powerful condition.”
Catch ‘Elijah Peel’ In Theaters
The movie, executive produced by Willie Robertson and Korie Robertson, co-stars Kevin Sorbo’s as Elijah’s manager. Shot on location in and around Memphis, Tennessee, Elijah Peele is now playing in theaters.
***Check out my review of Elijah Peel on CinemAddicts:
Will you be watching Elijah Peel this weekend? Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
Finish Your Screenplay: Reed Arnold On Writing Wedding Comedy ‘Do Us Part’
Reed Arnold writes, directs, and stars in the new wedding comedy Do Us Part. The Oklahoma City filmmaker, who has had his works produced on stage in San Antonio, New York City, and Los Angeles, stepped up to the plate and made his own indie film. It’s an ambitious task, and the great news is this film absolutely hits the mark. Arnold talked to Deepest Dream about the challenges of making the movie, which is now playing in Los Angeles and available on Digital. As for writing the screenplay, it was not an overnight process. Check out the full interview below!
Read more: Finish Your Screenplay: Reed Arnold On Writing Wedding Comedy ‘Do Us Part’
Do Us Part centers on Ryan (Travis Laughlin), a nice guys who’s about to marry the love of his life. With his best man Mark (Reed Arnold) by his side, what could possibly go wrong? When Ryan’s close friend Rose (Kelly Russo) pops up to the wedding without an invite, things get complicated.
‘Do Us Part’ Screenwriting Journey
The story’s first draft started as a twenty five page short back in 2014, and that original premise was already set in place. “I don’t remember how long it took (to write),” said Arnold. “But it was pretty quick, and a lot of that still remains in the final version.”
That story was rehearsed as a play several months later and then upon realizing the story could be expanded, it was turned into a full length tale. “Four years later I adapted it to a screenplay where I added the other characters and did some rearranging to open it up for film,” said Arnold. “So it’s kind of a long journey from the short script it was gonna be into the final product. But that core original idea of the best man keeping this thing afloat for his own reasons, and then I had a second plot twist idea pretty soon after that which really solidified the premise for me and made me think that I had something pretty fun. It was in bursts for six years basically that we put this thing together.”
Classic Sitcom Styles To ‘Do Us Part’
One of the script’s strongest aspects is its machine gun dialogue and banter among the characters. That aesthetic was inspired by Arnold’s love for such sitcoms as Friends and How I Met Your Mother. “I was going for that rat-a-tat sitcom style dialogue,” said Arnold. “That was the part I wanted to play. So that’s what came out, and I’ve tried to maintain that throughout the entire process. That was my North Star – you get some insults in there, but you always know that there’s still, love behind them.”
Check out my Do Us Part review on CinemAddicts:
Do Us Part is now playing in Los Angeles and is available on Digital.
***Full interview with Reed Arnold:
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Hokum,’ ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘The Descent Part II’ (PM Weekly #6)
Steve James spent the 1980s playing muscle in other people’s movies, Cannon Films action pictures, The Delta Force, American Ninja, a scene-stealing supporting role as Kung Fu Joe in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, streeting on disc again this very week. He died of cancer in 1993, forty years old, having never gotten the lead role his talent deserved. He got one. It just took thirty-six years for anyone to find it.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Hokum,’ ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘The Descent Part II’ (PM Weekly #6)Riverbend Starring Steve James Hits Physical Media
Riverbend, a 1989 independent action-drama, cast James as an army officer leading a Black uprising against a corrupt sheriff in the Jim Crow South. It got a limited VHS release through Paramount’s Prism label and then all but vanished. Michael Dennis, a Philadelphia archivist, first saw the tape on a video store shelf in the ’90s and didn’t watch it. Decades later, a mentor asked him to digitize it for YouTube. He finally watched his own transfer and realized what he’d been sitting on.
What followed took three years: tracking down the original 35mm negative, a 6K restoration supervised by the film’s original director, a theatrical run at the Aero and BAMcinématèk, and finally a Blu-ray release on Juneteenth this year, the first release from Dennis’s new label, Reelblack Renaissance. Its entire mission is rescuing Black independent films that never got proper releases, the ones that end up bare-bones or don’t get released at all, no commentary, no restoration, no context, just a scan and a barcode. “There’s no Black-owned boutique label doing this work,” Dennis said. “So we’re filling that gap.”
Riverbend didn’t need a studio to decide it mattered. It needed one person who refused to let a VHS tape stay the only copy that existed.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Project Hail Mary (2026), Alliance Entertainment
- Troy (2004), 3-disc Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- Mars Attacks! (1996), 30th Anniversary SteelBook, Warner Bros.
- JFK (1991), Theatrical Cut, Shout! Factory
- Harlan County USA (1976), Criterion
- New York, New York (1977), MVD
- Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- The Descent: Part II (2009), SteelBook, Lionsgate Limited
- Body Snatchers (1993), Vinegar Syndrome
- I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), Vinegar Syndrome
- Enemy at the Gates (2001), 25th Anniversary SteelBook, Paramount
- 54 (1998), Director’s Cut, Cinématographe
- Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story (2025), Shudder
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023), Lionsgate
- Circle of Iron (1978), exclusive SteelBook, Blue Underground
- Hokum (2026), Decal
- Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), Limited Edition, Fun City
- Abandon Ship (1957), Sony
- Buffet Froid (1979), Limited Edition of 4,000 copies, Indicator
MARKET SIGNAL
The Sopranos is getting its first-ever complete 4K box set on December 8th, all six seasons, eighty-six episodes, fully remastered, the release this show has deserved for years. It includes “Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos,” Alex Gibney’s acclaimed documentary on the show’s creator. One honest note: that documentary isn’t new, it aired on HBO back in 2024 and has been streaming on Max ever since. What is genuinely new is a single bonus featurette with David Chase, made specifically for this release and available nowhere else.
It’s worth sitting these two stories next to each other. A tiny Philadelphia label just spent three years and its own founder’s money reviving a film that had one VHS release and nothing since. A media conglomerate is bundling an existing streaming documentary into a box set and calling most of it new. Scale isn’t the same as care. Sometimes the smaller release is the one actually doing the work.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Beyond Video (Baltimore, MD)
A group of former customers and staff tried to save Video Americain, an actual John Waters filming location, the video store seen in Serial Mom, and couldn’t raise enough. Instead of giving up, they built an entirely new collection from scratch: donations from their own shelves, a public call for more, member support through Fractured Atlas in exchange for borrowing privileges. Opened in 2018 with under 9,000 titles, Beyond Video now holds more than 21,000. It’s not a survivor story. It’s a resurrection, built by the people who showed up after the original store couldn’t be saved.
(Next week: The Video Store MPLS, Minneapolis.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
The Ben Stiller Show: The Complete Series (2003 DVD, series originally aired 1992)
Format: DVD, 2 Discs
Bonus Features: Seven audio commentary tracks with Ben Stiller, the cast, and writers; “A Brief History of The Ben Stiller Show” featurette with an alternate pilot version; ten outtakes and five unaired sketches; an E! behind-the-scenes special; the “Melrose Heights” special commentary Easter egg.
Fox canceled this after twelve episodes, which is exactly the kind of decision that makes a case for physical media all by itself. The show won an Emmy for comedic writing, launched Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, and Andy Dick into everything that came after it, and network television still didn’t want it. This DVD, released a full decade later once Stiller had actual box office pull, includes a thirteenth episode that never even aired. That’s the whole argument: a show good enough to eventually earn a proper release, sitting on a shelf as complete proof it existed, instead of scattered across whatever corner of a streaming library still bothers to license it.
SIGN-OFF
That’s this week. A one-person label spent three years chasing down a negative nobody else wanted, and a media conglomerate spent one afternoon repackaging a documentary that already existed. Nineteen new titles landed on shelves regardless of which kind of effort went into them. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly – Sean Reid
Movie & TV Production
seanreid@worldonetv.com
Yihong Exa Huang’s ‘Fortune House’ Debuts At LA Shorts International Film Festival
Los Angeles based filmmaker Yihong Exa Huang’s Fortune House, a magical realist immigration narrative, makes its world premiere tonight at the LA Shorts International Film Festival. Huang, whose previous shorts include I Hate Love and Just Another Day, talked to CinemAddicts co-host Eric Holmes about the inspiration behind Fortune House.
Read more: Yihong Exa Huang’s ‘Fortune House’ Debuts At LA Shorts International Film Festival
Directed by Yihong Exa Huang, Fortune House centers on an undocumented Chinese delivery driver who discovers a restaurant that is run by demons. He gambles for his place in America through a risky game of mahjong.
“With a short film, you’re trying to show a glimpse of the world or a human condition,” said Huang, who is an AFI Conservatory graduate. “You can’t really tell more than that because the time is limited. But with a feature, you present the whole world. So for this kind of concept, we wanted to see if it works or not and we have a main character who is going to conquer through every difficulties to reach the end. We also want to see if it’s working or not by showing a glimpse of this world building. Then we can make a decision if we’re going to do more in the future.”
Next up for Fortune House is a hopeful successful festival run that starts tonight. “The reason we were so excited about LA Shorts International Film Festival is because we literally just started a festival run a month ago,” said Huang. “And this is the first news that we got. So we’re really excited for that. After that we will go for more festivals and hopefully get more screenings. And then after a year of a festival run, we will try to do more community based screenings. Then we’re trying to go on streaming and work with some media to publish it somewhere on a media platform.”
Huang is also writing an action comedy feature about a young immigrant who lives in the United States. When his father visits from China to celebrate his son’s graduation, he must hide that he’s dropped out of school and is a drug dealer. The script is currently under rewrites and is still in the financing process. “We will see how it goes after this,” added Huang.
Full interview with Yihong Exa Huang is on CinemAddicts and YouTube:
Catch Fortune House tonight at the LA Shorts International Film Festival at the Regal NoHo West in Los Angeles.
View this post on Instagram
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The People Vs. Larry Flynt,’ ‘Little Fockers,’ ‘Safe’ (PM Weekly #5)
Video Store Day turns sixteen this year. Daniel Hanna started it in 2010 as a grassroots way to get independent video stores rallying around one day the way record shops do every April. Sixteen years later, on October 17th, it’s got a real distributor behind it for the first time. MVD Entertainment Group, thirty-five years in the business, still family-owned, just signed on as an official partner, promising exclusive Blu-ray, 4K, DVD, and even VHS variants sold nowhere but through participating independent stores.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The People Vs. Larry Flynt,’ ‘Little Fockers,’ ‘Safe’ (PM Weekly #5)Hanna called it fifteen years of running Video Store Day as “a grassroots event,” now finally with a distributor’s backing. Fifteen years of doing this without one, just stores and volunteers and word of mouth, and it still built something worth a company the size of MVD showing up to help carry.
Record Store Day had it easier. Vinyl never really stopped being manufactured; it just went quiet for a while. Video stores watched their entire format get discontinued out from under them, and kept going anyway. Sixteen years of survival, on the format that wasn’t supposed to make it, just landed its first real distribution partner.
Products get announced in August. First MVD-backed exclusives ever. Mark the date.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), 20th Anniversary SteelBook
- American Pie 2 (2001)
- Creepshow 2 (1987), Special Edition, Arrow Video
- Little Fockers (2010)
- Night of the Comet (1984), SteelBook, Shout!
- School on Fire (1988), Shout!
- Safe (1995), Todd Haynes, Criterion
- The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Arrow Video
INDUSTRY WATCH
Two studios just lost separate control of their own discs. Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions acquired Studio Distribution Services this week, the joint venture Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery set up back in 2021 to handle their own DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K sales and distribution. Conectiv also picked up exclusive, long-term licensing agreements to run both studios’ physical home entertainment businesses going forward, folding disc and vinyl manufacturing, fulfillment, and distribution under one company for the first time. Conectiv’s CEO called it “the industry’s most comprehensive packaged-media platform.” That’s not marketing spin, it’s an accurate description of what just happened: two of the biggest libraries in the business now depend on a single third party to keep their discs made and shelved. Warner Bros.’ own head of transactional sales insists nothing changes for consumers or retailers. Maybe. But it’s worth noticing how much of this industry’s physical backbone just moved under one roof in a single afternoon.
MARKET SIGNAL
Not every game publisher is reading Sony’s exit from physical the same way. Sega’s president told Famitsu this week that the company has no plans to stop making physical games, pointing to what he called the “culture of physical media,” even while agreeing that digital makes sense for most full console and PC titles. Meanwhile, Ubisoft’s CEO said on an earnings call that he doesn’t think Sony’s move will “disturb the industry too much.” One company is quietly signaling it’ll keep making discs regardless of what Sony does. Another is shrugging like the whole question barely matters. That gap is the real story: physical gaming’s future isn’t actually settled industry-wide, it just looks that way when Sony’s the only one making headlines.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Free Blockbuster network
Not a store this time, a movement. Free Blockbuster started as a grassroots “take a disc, leave a disc” project: volunteers repurpose old newspaper boxes and cabinets, paint them in Blockbuster’s old blue-and-yellow, and stock them with DVDs anyone can take, no membership, no late fees, no app. Boxes have spread to dozens of cities, entirely community-run, entirely free. It’s the opposite model of everything else this feature has covered so far, no shelves, no staff, no single address, just physical media kept in circulation because enough people decided it should be.
(Next week: Beyond Video, Baltimore.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Tennis, Anyone? (2006)
Format: DVD, 1 Disc
Bonus Features: Deleted Scenes, Cast Interviews, Director’s Notes & Commentary, Hidden “Easter Eggs”
This one’s proof that DVDs preserved a whole tier of movie that streaming never bothered archiving. Donal Logue directs and stars as a washed-up actor chasing relevance through celebrity tennis, with a cast that reads like a “spot the future star” game: Paul Rudd in a small role years before he was Paul Rudd, plus Stephen Dorff, Danny Trejo, and Jason Isaacs filling out the supporting bench. The commentary track and cast interviews are the kind of extras a movie this small would never get again if it were made today, nobody’s licensing this for a streaming platform, let alone paying for new bonus content. The DVD isn’t just how you watch it. It’s the only reason any of that material exists at all.
SIGN-OFF
That’s this week. Video Store Day just landed its first real distributor after sixteen years of doing it alone. Two studios just handed their entire physical backbone to a single company in one afternoon. And somewhere out there, a repainted newspaper box wearing a dead company’s colors is quietly keeping discs in circulation anyway. Physical media doesn’t move in one direction. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly
Film & TV Production
Sean@WorldOneTV.com
Chloe Van Landschoot Talks ‘Son of Sara,’ Nursing, And Exploring “Spectrum of Humanity”
Chloe Van Landschoot, best known for her work on the TV series From, headlines the indie horror Son of Sara. Now on digital, the film centers on Sara (Van Landschoot), a pregnant woman whose fateful encounter with ex-boyfriend Troy (Garrett Hnatiuk) leads to a nightmarish and bloody ordeal. Co-starring Tymika Tafari as Sara’s understandably concerned lover and Jane Moffat as Troy’s unhinged mother, Son of Sara is a tension riddled tale that I really dug. Van Landschoot talked to Deepest Dream about her acting and also discussed how her years as a nurse informed her artistry and humanity.
Read more: Chloe Van Landschoot Talks ‘Son of Sara,’ Nursing, And Exploring “Spectrum of Humanity”
Preparing For ‘Son of Sara’ Role
Directed and written by Houston Bone, Son of Sara had a brisk shooting schedule. “We shot Son of Sara, I think, in 13 days, but Houston was very adamant about making sure that all the actors had really good chemistry,” said Chloe Van Landschoot. “And we did. We’d hang out a lot before we went to camera, so everyone just felt very comfortable with each other.”
One big drama for Son of Sara is the level of physicality that the role entailed. “Yeah, I really enjoyed that,” said Van Landschoot. “I have a big movement background, so being able to tell a story with my whole body was exciting for me. The challenge was just ensuring I had enough prep time to figure out where pregnancy sat in me.”
“I’ve never been pregnant before,” added Van Landschoot. “I’ve seen a lot of really bad pregnant acting on TV and Film, and I didn’t want to do that. I got the pregnant belly early and walked around town with it for a week or so. Just to figure out little things like how to get up from a chair, or how to get up from lying down or how to throw up with a belly on.”
Nursing And The “Spectrum of Humanity”
Although shooting From and projects Son of Sara keeps Van Landschoot busy, she still finds the time to keep her nurse license. “I work the one shift every six months I need to keep my license,” said Van Landschoot. “I worked hard for that and it’s an important part of who I am, and I don’t ever want to let that go.”
Can nursing and acting live in the same room? “I never saw them as separate worlds,” said Van Landschoot. “I saw them as these two things that feed each other and totally inform one another. A lot of my storytelling and artististic impulse stems from my life as a nurse. Working in healthcare, observing people being really vulnerable. Seeing the spectrum of humanity in a shift. So yeah, they’re never separate.”
To support that point of view, check out Van Landschoot’s first rate short Tidal:
Listen to my Son of Sara review on CinemAddicts:
Son of Sara is now available on VOD via Saban Films. Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
Full interview with Chloe Van Landschoot:
***We receive a slight commission when you purchase through our Amazon SiteStripe and/or affiliate links. Thanks for your support!
‘Ice Cream Man’ Movie Review: Eli Roth’s Latest Horror Has ‘Gremlins’ Energy
CinemAddicts co-host Eric Holmes loves Eli Roth’s directing projects. One of his favorites from Roth’s resume is the underrated 2018 feature The House With A Clock on Its Walls. Holmes continues that positivity with his review of Ice Cream Man. For the full review and more information this bloody horror feature, check out our post!
Read more: ‘Ice Cream Man’ Movie Review: Eli Roth’s Latest Horror Has ‘Gremlins’ Energy
Running at 86 minutes, Ice Cream Man centers on the titular character’s (Ari Millen) effect on children after he serves them sweet and tasty treats. Once the kids get a taste of the good stuff, they become killers! Eric Holmes described the move as “incrediby violent, gross, and gory.”
“When the kids go nuts, it becomes more like Gremlins,” said Holmes. “So instead of Gremlins going around town terrorizing everything and causing mayhem, there’s children going around. And I (compare the movie) to Gremlins because the way they kill people is, for lack of a better word, playful.”
Holmes added that The House With A Clock in Its Walls and Ice Cream Man are proof that Eli Roth knows a thing or two about working with youngsters. “The way that the kids act in this movie seems realistic,” said Holmes. “And I just wish he would do more horror made for children. I think that would be his niche. With a movie like Ice Cream Man, you couldn’t go this hard in a kids’ horror movie. Or maybe he could. He would know where the line is because he is really good at this. He shines most in that kind of area.”
Rounding out Ice Cream Man’s ensemble are Benjamin Byron Davis, Eli Roth, Karen Cliche, Dylan Hawco, Sarah Abbott, Shiloh O’reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Charlie Zeltzer, and Charlie Storey. Roth co-wrote the screenplay with Noah Belson.
Holmes ends his review with an interesting suggestion. “Bring a bunch of your friends that like to watch bloody horror movies and do some pre-gaming,” said Holmes. “Get some drinks in you before you go in there, or smoke bowls, whatever. you do. And then go watch Ice Cream Man. When you leave, see who can remember the most deaths!”
Check out Eric’s full Ice Cream Man review below (YouTube and CinemAddicts):
Ice Cream Man hits theaters Friday, August 7. Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and/or affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
Jeff Wadlow Talks ‘The Devil’s Mouth’ Collaboration With Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor
No streaming globally on Prime Video, The Devil’s Mouth centers on five friends who go on a thrill seeking adventure along Thailand’s. What starts off as a risky journey through a cave ends in a fight for survival thanks to a shark that’s out for blood. Director Jeff Wadlow talked to Deepest Dream about the challenges of shooting inside these caves and how having veterans like Kathryn Netwon and Lana Condor enhanced the production.
Read more: Jeff Wadlow Talks ‘The Devil’s Mouth’ Collaboration With Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor
Part of The Devil’s Mouth draw lies in its claustrophobic and maze like setting. A healthy portion of the narrative has the friends navigating within a darkened location with seemingly no end in sight.
“I think people sort of take for granted what we had to do with this movie,” said Jeff Wadlow, who previously directed Fantasy Island. There’s 13 caves that are scripted, and we only were able to have three sets. “Only two of them in water, and varying depths, so there was a lot of different shots I had to pick up on different sets to try to make it work. Fortunately, Alec Hammond, our production designer, is a mad scientist. The guy is an insane genius, and what he was able to pull off working closely with me really is an awesome feat. And a lot of credit also goes to the Thai crew, because Alec kinda had the vision. But then they made it a reality. It was a very challenging jigsaw puzzle of moving walls and changing sets and going from stage to stage and using certain parts of sets for different sets. But we figured it out.”
What also helped make The Devil’s Mouth a reality is the performances by lead actors Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor. “They are total pros, and I could not have made this movie without actors with that kind of experience,” said Wadlow. “Because the technical challenges were so massive. I mean, you can’t even put a mark down. How does an actor hit a mark when they’re in the water? There’s no way to put a mark down. So Lana and Kathryn, they’ve talked about this, how they started to figure out kind of the geometry of the set. And if the camera’s over there and the other actor’s there – lhow they need to find the line so they make sure that the lens can see them. It’s just a blessing.”
Speaking of blessings, Wadlow made his first feature with 2005’s Cry Wolf. Having a long and varied directing career has been part of Wadlow’s trademark, and he has taken a cue from late filmmaker Richard Donner (Superman). “ I love that he worked in different genres,” said Wadlow. “He worked in action, comedy, thriller. I mean, people forget he made The Omen. He made The Toy. He worked in all these different spaces. It wasn’t just action movies. And all of his films have verisimilitude.
Catch The Devil’s Mouth on Prime Video. Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Mortal Kombat II,’ ‘Pressure,’ ‘Soylent Green’ (PM Weekly)
Twenty-eight new titles landed on shelves this Tuesday. HD Report called it the biggest 4K release day of the month, and looking at the list, it’s hard to argue. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, finally, after more than a decade of fans asking. Stranger Things: The Complete Series in a 25-disc deluxe box. Mortal Kombat II, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Pressure, all day-and-date with their theatrical runs. Then the deep cuts: Threads and The War Game, two of the bleakest nuclear-war docudramas ever made. They’re streeting on the same day, from the same catalog-restoration ecosystem that’s also quietly finishing Lionheart’s 4K after a restoration dispute stalled it back in March.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Mortal Kombat II,’ ‘Pressure,’ ‘Soylent Green’ (PM Weekly)I keep writing about what’s disappearing in this space. Sony deleting purchased libraries. Streaming support getting switched off. It’s easy, some weeks, to make physical media sound like a rescue operation, a thing you do out of obligation to what’s being lost.
Then a week like this happens, and the math says otherwise. Twenty-eight titles, one Tuesday, spanning six decades of film, from a 1958 Elvis picture to a video game sequel that came out three weeks ago. Nobody’s manufacturing that volume out of nostalgia. Somebody’s paying for the restoration work, the pressing runs, the packaging design, the shelf space at retail, and somebody’s buying enough of it to make doing it again next month worth it. The format isn’t surviving on life support. Weeks like this one, it’s just working.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, 4-disc edition, Lionsgate
- Stranger Things: The Complete Series, 25-disc Deluxe and Special Editions, Arrow
- Mortal Kombat II (2026), Warner Bros.
- The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026), 20th Century Studios
- Pressure (2026), Universal
- South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), SteelBook
- Soylent Green (1973), Arrow Video
- Pillow Talk (1959), Universal
- King Creole (1958), Kino Lorber
- Lionheart (1990), Extended Cut, MVD Rewind (the restoration finally resolved)
- End of Watch (2012), Collector’s Edition, Shout!
- Overlord (2018), SteelBook, Paramount
- The Boys in the Band (1970), Cinematographe
- Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982), Cinematographe
- Deadly Blessing (1981), Kino Lorber
- Battle of the Worlds (1961), newly restored, Film Masters
- Tornado (2025), IFC
- A Bay of Blood (1971), 3 versions, Severin
- Threads (1984), Severin
- The War Game (1965), Severin
- In the Mouth of Madness (1994), Arrow Video
- Ms. 45 (1981), Arrow Video
- Explorers (1985), 3-disc, Vinegar Syndrome
- Human Lanterns (1982), Vinegar Syndrome
- Macabre (1980), Vinegar Syndrome
- Nightwatch (1997), Vinegar Syndrome
- The Mangler (1995), Vinegar Syndrome
- Happy Hell Night (1992), Terror Vision
INDUSTRY WATCH
Remember the merger freeze we covered two issues ago? It just got a lot bigger. On Friday, Paramount agreed to delay its Warner Bros. Discovery takeover entirely, not just the fourteen-day pause a judge ordered, but a full stop until an antitrust trial concludes, or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. That blows up Paramount’s plan to close the deal by September. The Justice Department and European regulators have both already cleared it. A dozen state attorneys general and the Writers Guild are still suing to block it outright, and for now, they’re winning. Paramount also starts owing Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders a quarterly fee for every quarter past September 30 the deal stays open, so every month of delay now has a price tag attached. The vault everyone’s licensing against is going to stay in limbo for a lot longer than anyone at Paramount planned for.
MARKET SIGNAL
“DVDs, Blu-ray and VHS are cool again,” according to the people actually watching the shift happen. Gen Z is buying physical media not out of nostalgia but discovery. They didn’t grow up with a DVD shelf, so there’s no baggage attached to owning one now, just the novelty of special features, cover art, and a movie that doesn’t vanish when a licensing deal expires. It’s the flip side of everything Sony’s been doing this month: while one company teaches people not to trust what they buy, an entire generation with no memory of physical media’s “golden age” is discovering it fresh, and deciding they like it.
//www.instagram.com/embed.js
STORE OF THE WEEK
Movie Madness (Portland, OR)
Founded in 1991, Movie Madness was saved from closing in 2018 by a Hollywood Theatre-led Kickstarter that raised over $300,000, and is now run by the nonprofit Film Forever Northwest. The collection tops 90,000 titles, with the actual archive closer to 102,000 physical copies once you count every format. Alongside the shelves sits a free film props museum, Norman Bates’ knife from Psycho, the severed ear from Blue Velvet, William Holden’s shotgun from The Wild Bunch, artifacts most people assume only exist in a studio vault somewhere. The store is currently mid-relocation to a larger space across from the Hollywood Theatre, expected to open in spring 2027.
(Next week: the Free Blockbuster network.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon (1985), 30th Anniversary Edition Format: Blu-ray, 1 Disc Bonus Features: “Return of the Dragon” retrospective featurette, audio commentary by director Michael Schultz, original theatrical trailer
This one waited a long time to get its due. Sony sat on the Blu-ray until 2015, thirty years after release, and made up for the wait with new dynamic cover art from Mondo artist Gary Pullin and a proper retrospective instead of a bare-bones port. The Motown soundtrack alone, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Vanity’s “Rhythm of the Night,” is reason enough to own the disc over streaming it. Berry Gordy’s fingerprints are all over this thing, right down to the music, and it took three decades before physical media treated it like the cult object it always was.
SIGN-OFF
That’s Issue #4. Twenty-eight titles in one Tuesday, a billion-dollar merger pushed back another year, and a generation with no memory of the “golden age” deciding physical media is worth having anyway. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly – Sean Reid Film & TV Production seanreid@worldonetv.com
Kendyl Berna On Discovery Shark Week, Researching Mako Sharks, And Beyond The Reef
Kendyl Berna’s career as a marine biologist and film producer is a perfect marriage thanks to her work on Discovery Shark Week. Tonight she gets in shark cage for Biggest Mako on Earth (premiering on Discovery at 10 pm et/pt). Berna talked to Deepest Dream about her passion for sharks and the ocean and she also elaborated why her non-profit Beyond The Reef is a big part of her life.
Read more: Kendyl Berna On Discovery Shark Week, Researching Mako Sharks, And Beyond The Reef
The City of Angels Provided Early Ocean Passions For Kendyl Berna
Kendyl Berna grew up in Southern California, and knowing the lay of the land helped give her a bit of familiarity diving into these Discovery Channel projects.
“This is my fourth year actually going out there and studying the Makos for Shark Week,” said Berna. “So I grew up right there. But growing up, I went diving a bit. My mom would take me diving. But I was a little bit less into it. It’s a little cold in California, truthfully. Then I moved to the British Virgin Islands and started an ocean conservation non-profit. And I was in the water five times a day diving for something – whether it was shark research, cetacean research, ghost fishing gear removal, and actually cutting nets out of coral coral research. Things like that. I became a real water baby. I feel very comfortable in there.”
