Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Announces Bambi: Anniversary Edition For June 6 Delivery

It is so hard to get a handle on what Disney is up to these days … it all seems so chaotic.   We can’t say for sure that June 6 is a train wreck waiting to happen or not, but it will be an important release date for Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment one way or another … that much is certain.

The confusion comes from both Target and Best Buy being out early with news that their “special edition” versions of director Bill Condon’s theatrical smash, Beauty and the Beast, would be available on June 6.   They then, collectively, took that date down from their respective sites and now just list the title as a pre-order.   

In the meantime, WaxWorks, a national distributor of home entertainment products, confirmed June 6 as the street for Beauty and the Beast in the latest edition of the company’s “Hot Sheet” sales solicitation bulletin — after teasing the release in a double-truck ad in the previous edition of the “Hot Sheet.”

Then just when you think that Disney’s is about to confirm the release up pops news of an “Anniversary Edition” of the 1942 animated classic, Bambi.   That would make it a 75^th Anniversary Edition of the theatrical release — late summer of 1942 theatrical debut.

That seems a bit rushed, but then you have to acknowledge that Disney knows what they are doing … but announcing an important anniversary edition of Bambi after the pre-book?   What’s the rush?  

So it is for sure that June 6 is the street for the Bambi: Anniversary Edition (a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack), and as far as we know, Beauty and the Beast will arrive on the same date (but we are beginning to suspect that the early June date is being scrubbed in favor of a street date closer to Labor Day).   

As to newly-prepared bonus goodies for the Bambi: Anniversary Edition, there are two deleted scenes — “Bambi’s Ice and Snow” and “The Grasshopper” — a pair of featurettes and the 1928 silent Oswald the Rabbit animated short release of Africa Before Dark.

There are also recycled bonus nuggets from previously released versions of Bambi and these are: a six-part “making-of” documentary titled “The Making of Bambi: A Prince is Born” and 1937 theatrical cartoon presentation of Silly Symphony: The Old Mill … among others.