Warner Plans Direct-to-Disc Horror Sequels for Blu-ray, HD DVD

[jed]

Warner Home Video has announced a new pact with Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment to produce a series of direct-to-video horror sequels for release on Blu-ray and HD DVD, starting with the sequel 'Return to Haunted Hill' this Halloween

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/713

[Nick Lavigne]

I like house on haunted hill. They should put that on blu-ray.

[Ron_M]

This could be fun! The choose your own adventure thing with all the different possiblities sure adds to the replayability - will be sure to check this one out!

[Hastor]

I think the choose your own adventure thing sounds gimmicky as hell. It pulls you out of the movie and becomes more like a crappy video game with a handful of choices, like a Dragon's Lair where you can't die, just see different scenes. I'd prefer a director to pick a version and have a reason for the scenes being where they are. Even in a cheesy horror movie that's important for it to be good. As long as you can just watch the movie which IS a cut by the director which I'm sure you can, I don't think this will really interfere, other than by taking budget away from the main movie to film so many alternate scenes, resulting in an overall lower budget per-minute production. The choose your own adventure thing didn't get popular on DVD, and no matter how more smoothly it transitions now its the same thing. I'm usually not against extra features that I don't care about, but this really seems like it would detract from the main film's budget which is already reportedly "low-budget". If I do pick up the movies I'd only use the feature if i REALLY liked a movie and there was no page to just watch the extra footage. Or if someone actually pulled off a "choose your own adventure" that thought in a new direction and impressed me, but I'll be surprised if that happens. It's already direct to video, let them have all the money for the story the director wants to tell. I don't even care about House on Haunted Hill but I'm sure there will be one along that I want to check out in this horror movie line.

[HectorB]

I'm down for this!

[Ice2Dragon]

Wow.. they get more creative for a direct to dvd sequel for extras than they do with the real movies they put on dvd -_-V

Itll be cool though, definite buy. regardless of the price..

[ccphilly1984]

looks so fun... now i got 2 hd dvds i really want bad next week... this and transformers... i think i just came a little bit...

[messin18]

I'm still not sure about this.

Sounds interesting... could be fun.. just not 100% sure it's a buy.

A really cool feature would be for it to remember all of your choices and save that as a movie. So you could just rewatch that exact movie again without haveing to make the choices and disrupting the film.

Depending on the choices it could be great. Like when you watch a movie and the characters do something really annoying and stupid. This wuold be a way to ensure that doesn't happen.

[fitprod]

Wow... It's taken about 20 years, but it looks like the interactive gaming methods originally introduced on LD are finally going to be realized.

For those of you are too young to remember, during the early days of LD, there were attempts to create interactive movies/games around the mid-1980's on LD. I can't remember the titles, but I know there was at least on murder mystery type game released.

This technology was used on the orginal multi-disc Close Encouners LD from Criterion, so one could view the original version of the film, or the first extended edition. As with Dragon's Lair and other titles of the ilk of the time, these releases suffered from access delays.

Hopefully, with the new interactive interfaces, these high-def discs will not suffer quite the same fate.

fitprod

[jedimasterasd]

I agree this is gimmicky and would only be good on horror movies.
you wouldnt be able to do this in a big budget "real" movie because it would completely ruin character development, and plot lines. I say its doable in horror movies becuase they generally have bad acting and a crappy story anyway and it would be kinda cool just to determine who dies and how.

[WesleyTech.com]

The clip they wrote about on the frontpage today is pretty old. I posted about it on August 12th.
http://wesleytech.com/choose-your-ow...r-blu-ray/327/

[taygan315]

Never heard of this film. But the features sound pretty cool. Might have to check this one out a bit more.

[The_Omega_Man]

This is not like Dragon's Lair! This is a much more interactive movie watching and entertaining experience. There appears to be no pressing of the remote buttons, at just the right time, to affect the overall movie outcome.

But I'm sure that NONE of the really hard core Blu-Ray fans, will even consider the interactive aspects of this disc, because as it has been so vehemently stated, SO many times before, BD fans don't (can't)buy movies for the interactive experience! BD Fans only buy for the movie itself! So seems like a waste to put the interactive element on Blu-Ray to me! HD DVD fans, however, will probably enjoy this somewhat!

It does open some potential possibilities for future movie making though!

Any one remember the multiple angle capability of DVD and how that really changed movie making... right?

[MNTWISTER]

I'll just be ok with the movie thanks, give me the best transfer and uncompressed sounbd. Sure it sounds interesting, and maybe fun, but I really feel if I want a game, I'll buy a game.

[Pimboli]

Is there an option to just watch the movie as it was shot is if you dont want to 'play along'

Its an interesting if dodgy sounding idea.