Disney sees Blue, Blu-ray that is
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?Live, onscreen chat functions for future installments of such titles as “Lost” and “High School Musical,” exclusive conversations with filmmakers, and a suite of other Web-enhanced special features are among the next-generation extras Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has up its sleeves as the studio begins an aggressive push to transition consumers from standard DVD to Blu-ray Disc.
During a presentation Monday night to officially unveil Disney’s first BD Live title — an elaborate 50th anniversary edition release of “Sleeping Beauty” — division president Bob Chapek promised to add BD Live elements, which allow movie viewers to tap into the Web for a wealth of interactive options, to all upcoming Disney-branded releases beginning in the fourth quarter. To further hasten the transition to Blu-ray Disc, Disney is including a standard DVD with “Sleeping Beauty” to make it easy for consumers to understand the difference between the two formats.
Chapek said the interactive extras on “Sleeping Beauty,” from a menu backdrop that mirrors weather conditions in the viewer’s home town to onscreen chat rooms and video messaging, are merely “our jumping off point of what’s to come.”
“And that new canvas will now enable filmmakers and studios alike to push the creative content arena to heights never before imagined,” Chapek said.
Thanks to BD Live technology, future Disney releases could include such extras as live chats with filmmakers in which viewers use their Blackberrys or other PDAs to type in their end of the conversation, which then appears on the screen, as the movie rolls.
- From THR