Mark Evanier, who is well-known among comic book afficianados for his time spent as an assistant/apprentice to the legendary Jack Kirby, has also spent quite a bit of time in the world of Television writing as well. He started out as a Story Editor for
Welcome Back, Kotter, and has written for such diverse shows as
The McLean Stevenson Show, Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, Pink Lady and Jeff, Dungeons & Dragons, Pryor's Place, Garfield and Friends and
superman: The Animated Series. He's also participated in DVD extras for a nice bunch of animated program releases, including the 1966
Spider-Man series and upcoming releases for
Huckleberry Hound and
Yogi Bear. In a nutshell, Mark's very well connected!
Today he's reported at his
NewsFromMe.com website that "a company" (he says that he believes it to be Time-Life...more on that in a moment) is preparing an announcement for "any day now", which will see the DVD release of every episode of
Get Smart.
We told you
way back in February that a studio (not named at the time) was looking at finally getting this show released on DVD in time for the program's 40th anniversary. Part of the hold-up, as Evanier explains it, was a lot of confusion surrounding the rights to this particular property. A *lot* of people thought it would be Paramount who owned
Get Smart, but Evanier explains that "Time-Life" is apparently the owner here, but the real issue now is "specifically WHO at Time-Life?"
When Evanier says "Time-Life," it brings to mind the direct sales arm at TimeLife.com, which currently provides
Hee-Haw releases, among others. There is also some discussion elsewhere that these DVDs could come out from Time Life, Inc. subsidiary Warner Home Video, as a mainstream retail release instead of from direct sales. Carl Birkmeyer, who runs the
Would You Believe? website, is quick to point out that HBO (whose home videos are distributed by Warner Home Video) ought to be the current property owner due to their production of the 1995
Get Smart remake series starring Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, and Andy Dick.
We're working on finding out more about this complicated matter for you, but right now all we *think* we know is that the earliest any DVDs would actually be available to consumers is around the first quarter of 2006, and that Season Sets are the direction they are looking at. Extras have been considered, but to our knowledge no decision had been made at the last time we heard anything. Our thanks to reader Brent Seguine for sending us the tip about Mark Evanier's post on this subject. Stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated on developments just as soon as the cone of silence is lifted...
