A couple of months ago we
broke the news that BCI was planning on a February 2008 DVD release of the 2002 version of
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Now BCI's parent company, Navarre, has
a listing posted which shows that the release date of the first set is
February 19th, at a cost of $26.98 SRP. Our thanks to reader "L. Allen" for the heads-up about this info, after they spotted it posted by our friends over at
He-Man.org earlier this week.
This will be the first of 3 sets, each containing 13 episodes. It looks like we should savor these releases, as they may be the last of their kind put out by BCI. A
trade journal report in Home Media Magazine dated Nov. 7th states that Navarre had disappointing financial results in their most recent fiscal quarter, citing the BCI division as one of the principle causes of the losses. As a result, Navarre CEO Cary Deacon said that they will "
continue to focus efforts to reposition BCI into the Latino and budget categories," which you may recall is where the company started at, prior to getting into the TV-on-DVD business with such great early titles as the
After School Specials and the
New Zoo Revue, which itself was prior to obtaining licenses from Filmation and others.
BCI has already been undergoing a restructuring, resulting in their moving into the Minnesota headquarters of Navarre, and letting go of staff and contractors. Among the contractors they have already stopped working with is animation historian Andy Mangels, who did an awesome job with the extras on BCI's releases. We certainly hope Mangels is picked up by some of the other studios out there releasing similar packages!
Stay tuned and we'll bring you more info about these
He-Man releases, including cover art, just as soon as we can get our hands on it.
