Happy Birthday Wing Commander Movie! (March 12, 2014)

[ChrisReid]

The Wing Commander Movie first premiered in theaters on March 12, 1999. It's hard to believe that 15 years have gone by! It's been a good year for the film: a physical high definition version finally materialized in August on Blu-ray and the DVD got an anamorphic rerelease. Streaming options have crept up in resolution to be nearly as sharp as the BD, and broadcasts have kept the film constantly in front of audiences. Even the soundtrack is now available digitally. When we originally traveled to Austin for the premiere, we couldn't have imagined that we'd all eventually be carrying around HD players in our pockets that let you watch the film anywhere at any time, but the future is amazing. Where do we go from here? It's anybody's guess, but the movie rights revert back to Chris Roberts next year...

AD> When is the special edition of the Wing Commander movie comming out?
Chris_Roberts> One day I would like to do a full cut with digital Kilrathi, Merlin and the full Pilgrim subplot
Chris_Roberts> I get the US & UK rights back in 2015
Chris_Roberts> Yes - Fox just got distribution rights for English speakign territories for 17 years

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Original update published on March 12, 2014

 

[AD]

Even though Chris is super busy with Star Citizen, I really do hope he goes back and re-edits the movie from the original film stock. There's obviously some things you can't fix about the movie (casting... ahem) but there's a ton of establishing shots of the various fleet scenes for example that would have done a lot to give the Kilrathi threat perspective that would have been good to have finished and in the film. There was supposed to be a couple of different Kilrathi fighters too, not just the Dralthi. The Kilrathi Capships were also simplified... one is just a smaller version of the Snakier.

Chris mentioned possibly redoing all the creature effects with CG too which should be relatively easy (but maybe expensive??) with CIGs mo-cap studio. So many of the movie's weird plot holes and conveniences disappear with the Traitor subplot back in.