Lions Gate has apparently listened to
fan concerns about the cover art for
Saved By The Bell - Season 5. As we reported this past Monday, fans were up in arms because the cover art for the 5th season box set took a group shot that originally featured the face of Elizabeth Berkley ("Jessie"), and replaced the face with that of Leanna Creel ("Tori"), who stepped in later in the final season when both Berkley and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen ("Kelly") ankled the show about halfway through. Potential consumers thought that there was no legit reason for Thiessen to continue to be on the cover, while removing Berkley in favor of Creel.
Fans at the discussion forum for the SavedByTheBellNOW.com fansite rightly pointed out that there's plenty of room on the cover for all of these cast members, and it looks like Lions Gate literally went back to the drawing board to do exactly what was suggested! Today, the studio distributed - with no comment or explanation on the matter (at least that we were made aware of) - a new graphic showing cover art for the 5th Season box set, and it shows Berkley's face restored to the original group shot design, and Creel's face (and body) inserted into the available space on the left side of the back row:
You'll also note that the picture demonstrates the cover art wrapped around a plastic "keepcase", instead of the cardboard "digipacks" which the previous Lions Gate
SBTB season sets have shipped out in. This is still going to be a 3-DVD set, as far as we know, and while there are keepcases out there which could hold three discs and be as thin as depicted above, that's probably not what Lions Gate intends to use. It is our belief that they are still going with the digipack version, and that in their rush to distribute the changed artwork they probably just photoshopped the new version onto a keepcase image by mistake.
Finally, we'll mention that there appears to be little or no change to the way Dennis Haskins ("Belding") is shown in that shot, and fans had also complained about that (saying that the angle of his head looked wrong compared to the shoulders). A post by at the SavedByTheBellNOW discussion forum by "principal" Erika, who runs the site, said that she had communicated with Haskins through his brother: while this new cover didn't appear to be specifically addressed, it sounds like Haskins has no worries with Lions Gate in regard to how he's portrayed on these box sets, and if he's not worried, then it's a cinch fans shouldn't hold out resentment over it, either.
In fact, fans should be very happy! It looks like they've gotten the change they wanted, and we at TVShowsOnDVD will be the first to thank and congratulate Lions Gate for being responsive to fans on this matter. We're happy to have played a role in this, and hope that the studio continues to keep us up-to-date on
Saved By The Bell and all their other TV-related releases. We also are grateful to all the fans who brought this to our attention, and were patient with us while we looked into the matter. Thanks!
