Blu-ray Alert: Back to the Frontier?

Yahoo! Deadwood is being dusted off for Blu-ray.

Amazon is taking pre-orders for the HBO western that ran for three season before being axed because of skyrocketing production costs and unrewarding ratings.

News of the series being spruced up for HD is a real bonanza for Kiwi fans as it means the show hopefully will be released here for the first time with the US extras that were left off the Australasian DVDs.

Deadwood isn’t the only classic TV series being revisited for Blu-ray; so, too, is one of the medium’s true pioneers, The Twilight Zone. Season one goes on sale in the US in September with such exclusive Blu-ray extras as the unofficial series pilot and 19 new commentaries.

Another blast from the past coming soon to Blu-ray is the Back to the Future trilogy. A NZ release date has still to be confirmed but expect it to be around the same time as the US  — October — to mark the franchise’s 25th anniversary.

And if that doesn’t have you exclaiming, “Great Scott!”, what about this: Warner Bros in the US has announced it will release The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon on Blu-ray in October.

Meanwhile, The Digital Bits has just published a passionate, enraged plea for Hollywood studios to improve their Blu-ray mastering of iconic movies, with one of the worst examples of a botched transfer being Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.