HOLY SPECIAL EDITIONS, BATMAN!
Batman 4 DVD gets a special edition!
Reported By: TheARNOLDFANS.com Staff
Friday, January 21, 2005

Arnold fan AB King informs us today of the new special edition treatments that the first four Batman films are undergoing. Could Schumacher possibly give us a GOOD "Batman and Robin"? Considering we are told that Schumacher Will give Batman 3 reshoots with a small budget by WB, it looks like Batman 4 will remain once again the biggest embarrassment. Some one tell Schumacher to forget fixing part 3 and work on the bigger disaster!

AB King:
TAFs, I know I gave you a great example before of another film getting more extended scenes by a studio and now I found another story of a HUGE franchise such as the TERMINATOR films that will get not only huge updated SE's for the first time for each film, but the 3rd film... BATMAN FOREVER will get re-edits and a small budget for the director to add extra scenes and alter film footage. Warner Brothers did it for FOREVER, so why not for TERMINATOR 3?

It was earlier mentioned Warner Bros was planning on sprucing up the first four "Batman" movies on DVD to coincide with the release of next Summer's "Batman Begins". www.batman-on-film.com reports that both discs for Batman and Batman Returns have been finished for quite a while. Director Tim Burton provides commentary as does an unspecified guest.

"Batman" will feature a fat doco on the film's making, trailers, TV spots, and vintage footage. Roughly the same for "Batman Returns" but apparently the doco on the first film's disc is beefier than the latter.

Joel Schumacher's "Batman Forever" will also encompass a nipple-suit full of new extras. "Joel recorded commentary tracks for the theatrical edition along with BATMAN AND ROBIN (Look for a 'special guest' on that track as well).

Afterwards Joel decided to ask WB to recut the film back to something that resembles his original edit. WB agreed and gave him a budget to do so. Joel is currently in Burbank working on some alterations to the film", says a scooper for the site. "WB wants to also include the original theater version of the film, Which kind of paints Joel into a corner. You see because they will have to use a process called 'seamless branching.' This works with films like T2 or ALIENS where chunks of the film were simply taken out. In the case of FOREVER entire parts of the film were re-edited. So Joel may be forced to alter the original cutting decisions to keep it possible to seamlessly branch with the theatrical version. But rest assured the extended cut will clock in somewhere around 2 hrs. 35 mins. It just might take place in the order of events the theatrical version presented rather than the shooting script or workprint edit. With the exception of the Two Face escaping scene, Which will come before the credits - meaning we might loose that nifty WB/Batlogo morph. Joel knows he is considered the devil to some in the Bat-world and wants this to be his redemption. He's going to add as much footage as possible back in. Also some of the effects were not finished in the early workprint and they need to be finished. He has been given a small budget to work with for that. All new effects will be digital. Which with today's technology will look better than most of the CGI back in 1995". The pretty new shiny things should be in store in-time for either Christian Bale's debut as Batty - either theatrically or on home video.

For more Batman info, check www.batman-on-film.com and DarkHorizons.com!

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TheARNOLDFANS.com Staff