Spartacus: Blood and Sand Blu-ray Bound

On the eve of production starting in Auckland of a prequel to Spartacus: Blood and Sand, ScreenScribe.tv has learned the first steamy season at last has been picked up for NZ broadcasting.

None of the free-to-air channels was interested in the racy, ultra-violent series about a warrior the Romans enslave and train to be a gladiator, so don’t be surprised if it winds up on Sky TV, most likely on its male-skewing, action-driven Box channel.

The downside of this is The Box being SD-only; to see Spartacus: Blood and Sand in HD, you’ll have to wait for the Blu-ray of the first season to go on sale in the US in September.

However, at this stage it’s not known if the Blu-ray will be region-locked; if it is, fans without multi-zone Blu-ray players, like Oppo’s, will have to wait for the local release, although distributor Madman Entertainment cannot yet confirm when Spartacus will be released in NZ and if it will be offered on Blu-ray as well as DVD.

For the DVD/Blu-ray release, the digital effects in several episodes have been enhanced and exclusive to the Blu-ray will be four “director’s cut extended episodes” with content that was “too risque even for cable TV”. These episodes were chosen by producer Rob Tapert, who’s married to one of the show’s stars, Lucy Lawless.