It's been more than a year since we
reported the very happy-sounding news - direct from World Events Productions ("WEP") - that a deal to bring all forms of
Voltron to DVD was about to be signed. In their own words from August 2004, "
We really think it will be within the next 30 days." Well, it's been a year and thirty days now, and no word. Fans are left wondering what happened.
At the end of our story last year, we promised you that we would "keep an eye on World Events' website for you, and keep talking to them, and we'll be sure to fill you in on all the details once this gets announced." We have kept our promise: not a day has gone by when we did not check their website. Not a quarter has gone by without us attempting to get WEP back on the phone or to e-mail them (all to no response). And we had nothing to fill you in with, because there was no announcement. But we know a bit about what's going on, thanks to the ever-present industry grapevine. We've decided that the time is right to share what little we know - or think we know, anyway - with our readers.
Multiple industry sources told TVShowsOnDVD last year that the "deal" was supposed to be with the winner of a fierce bidding war, competed on by multiple companies that included
Transformers-releasing Rhino and also Anchor Bay, who
released a U.K. Voltron DVD in Sept. 2004 (which now appears to be out of print). From what we were told at the time, the winner was not either of them, but instead was Houston-based anime specialist
ADVFilms. That didn't matter, though, because apparently the "imminent" deal was never completely signed. When we casually asked about it during a call in mid-December about other releases, ADVFilms told us that they did NOT have
Voltron.
Fans who bookmarked
WEP's "DVD News" web page have noticed that it has remained unchanged in over a year. What fans may NOT have realized is that the page in question is no longer linked to from the VoltronForce.com website! If you go to that site's
News & Events page, and scroll down to the bottom half that starts by saying "
Well, it's been a while since we've been able to update the news section...", then you'll note that the vertical boxes that link to various news categories no longer have a "DVD" choice. It now goes straight from "Toys" to "New Series" to "Comic Books", etc. That page originally had "DVD" among the first three news categories; WEP obviously removed this since then; in all likelihood the change was made because something changed about a DVD release, which was no longer "any day now".
So what did happen? Well, at first,
a new Voltron series was going to happen...in 2005. As the year is three-quarters of the way over, and we've all noticed that no such new show has been announced, we can only assume here that the new program got delayed or fell through somehow. Or else got "upgraded".
In late July, 2005, a story was widely
circulated that
Voltron was headed to the big screen!
The Hollywood Reporter was the origin of that story, stating that Mark Gordon Productions (
L.A.X., Saving Private Ryan, The Day After Tomorrow) was teaming up with WEP to produce the big-budget movie that will focus on the pilots who journey to Arus to learn to operate the ships which combine into the enormous robot. The Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) has a
listing for that feature film, showing it as a planned release for
2008.
It looks like the DVDs for
Voltron had been targeted as a tie-in to the property's re-birth as a new series (the same sort of "marketing tie-in" plan that kept
Bewitched season set DVDs off the market until the new Nicole Kidman film hit theaters this past Summer). Now that the wait for a new
Voltron program in 2005 has turned into a wait for a new film in 2008, will desperate fans have to wait until then to get
Lion Force DVDs in North America? We don't know, frankly, and by our deadline we had not received a response from WEP to our request for a statement. This has characterized the general lack of a reply we've had for the past twelve months, whenever we've asked WEP to clarify the situation.
It seems that the only fans of
Voltron in the world who can enjoy a DVD release right now is in Australia, where the entire
Lion Force series
is available (and four of the five collections are getting a mark-down next month, having been on the market for a while now). Australia also has a
Vehicle Force DVD set already out, and a second one coming out in about five weeks. These discs aren't for use in North America, though: the discs aren't compatible with Region 1 DVD players, and the video is in "PAL" format rather than North American "NTSC" television format. That means you would need a special player that can convert both, which isn't something the average American has in their living rooms.
Ironically, while
Voltron fans here wait impatiently for this classic cartoon series to come to stores, there is artwork on
one page of WEP's website that looks ready-to-use as DVD cover art for both
Lion Force Voltron and the late-'90s CGI-animation show
Voltron: The Third Dimension (both reproduced below). We don't know if this art was created for that purpose, but fans who see that page note that it's the correct shape for a DVD box front, and get excited and write in to us thinking that this must mean a release is just around the corner. We have no knowledge of that, and we don't think it actually means anything. As far as we know, plans are postponed indefinately for all
Voltron DVDs. It will be up to WEP to tell us otherwise, and so far they haven't been talking. Here at TVShowsOnDVD, this animated series from the '80s has gottem more votes from fans wanting a release than such evergreen classic TV shows as
St. Elsewhere, Gomer Pyle and
The Love Boat. It's highly popular, and there's no need to wait until 2008 for a new film to tie in a DVD release with.
Fans are waiting for this now. Will they get it? We don't know yet. Stay tuned...
