Wow! Paramount Home Media spent the Thanksgiving holiday period preparing a release blitz of new DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD titles for release during the first quarter of 2021. There is a lot here, so let’s get to it.
In chronological order we kick off the New Year with a three-SKU helping of writer/director Michael Matthews’ post-apocalyptic thriller, Love and Monsters. Lined-up for delivery on Jan. 05 are stand-alone Blu-ray and DVD editions, plus a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack presentation.
The ARR works out to 81 days and the limited (Covid-19) theatrical run generated one million dollars in ticket sales.
The good news, the killer asteroid heading for Earth is destroyed. The bad news, a chemical rain of debris has turned common insects and such into giant monsters that have ravaged the planet.
An unlikely hero emerges in the form of Joel Dawson (Dylan O’Brien — The Maze Runner, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Deepwater Horizon), who is not at his best when it comes to battling the new “top of the food chain” creatures that live on the surface. Everyone he knows is gone, except for his high school heartthrob, Aimee (Jessica Henwick — Game of Thrones, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens), but she’s gone missing.
For seven long years he has lived with other survivors in an underground bunker, but now he’s learned that she too has survived in a similar safe place just 85 miles away. With the creatures that roam the Earth, that distance might as well be to the moon and back … but there he goes, alone, in search of her! He had better be a quick learner, or he is going to be lunch!!
Bonus features include deleted scenes and a pair of featurettes — “Bottom of the Food Chain: The Cast of Love and Monsters” and “It's a Monster's World: Creating a Post-Apocalyptic Landscape.”
Shifting to Jan. 19, we have director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s Dreamland, a Depression-era tale of a seductive bank robber on the run who finds an unlikely “partner” in helping her avoid the long arm of the law. DVD and Blu-ray editions are planned for release.
It’s 1935, Texas, Eugene Evans (Finn Cole — as Michael in the Peaky Blinders cable series) is a teenager living with his mother, step-father and his younger step-sister. No future, no nothing … he loses himself in those pulp fiction detective novels and the like, until one day he finds in the barn a bank robber on the run.
Not just any bank robber mind you, but the notorious Allison Wells (played by Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood’s Margot Robbie), whose latest job went south and five people were killed. She’s wounded and all Eugene has to do is summon his step-dad, George (Travis Fimmel — Warcraft), who is a mean-as-a-snake deputy sheriff, and that will be it for Allison Wells.
Teenager, beautiful woman, the thrill of an actual gun moll in his barn … oh, how the mind wanders. Save her, nurse her back to health and help her get away … that’s the plan!!
The following week, Jan. 26, Paramount Home Media has set for both DVD and Blu-ray one of the funniest “Christmas” films since Home Alone or Elf. Seriously, the new “Cohn Brothers” have arrived in the form of Eshom and Ian Nelms, who, in any other year would have a breakout theatrical hit in Fatman, but 2020 is not the year for breakout theatrical hits. Just getting a film into a few theatres these days is a struggle.
Fatman opened for a limited run just prior to Thanksgiving, pulled in about $250,000 in ticket sales and arrives in the home entertainment packaged media marketplace with an ARR of 74 days.
In a “normal” year, Fatman would have played through the Christmas and the New Year holiday period and well into January, pulling in box office gold, but … well, no point in beating a dead horse.
Mel Gibson is Chris Cringle, who lives in North Peak, Alaska with his wife Ruth (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who keeps him in check … Chris has a hair trigger and anger issues. Do something even the least bit stupid and there’s a lump of coal for you … which is exactly what Billy Wenan (Chance Hurstfield — Good Boys) got for Christmas and he’s not happy with that.
Billy is a wealthy, spoiled teenage brat and his solution is to kill Santa Claus. True, kill Santa Claus. So, he hires a professional hitman, Jonathan Miller (aka: Skinny Man), played by Walton Goggins, who gets the chance to channel his best Boyd Crowder persona from Justified (perfect casting) and goes on the hunt for Santa.
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What Billy and Miller don’t know is that Chris Cringle has a contract with the United States military to help with the manufacturing of hardware (a little extra cash to help make ends meet). In addition to his elf crew, he has a squad of soldiers stationed at his place … quite an operation.
Circling-back to the Nelms Bros., Fatman is in the same league as the Cohn Bros. and Fargo. Seriously!! Funny and violent … Chris and his elves have met their match with Miller and anyone who gets in the middle of this battle can end up dead. Fatman is indeed one to put on the MUST-SEE list, even if you’ve been naughty, come Jan. 26 … Blu-ray or DVD from Paramount Home Media.
Whoa, whoa … don’t be running off, there’s more!!
The first week of February has a five-film, first-time-on-Blu-ray promotion featuring Ladybugs, Lassie, Mouse Hunt, Small Soldiers and the remake of Yours, Mind and Ours. Priced-to-own, all five. Street date is Feb. 2.
Also arriving on Feb. 2 is the newest Paramount Presents Blu-ray release, which is Cameron Crowe’s 2005 romantic comedy, Elizabethtown, starring Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom.
This is a new 4K master of the film supervised by Cameron Crowe. Bonus features include extended and deleted scenes, four featurettes — “On the Road to Elizabethtown,” “The Music of Elizabethtown,” “Meet the Crew” and “Training Wheels” — and the newly-prepared feature titled “Filmmaker Focus: Cameron Crowe on Elizabethtown.”
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