According to German MacGyver Forums, owner, Jano, the German Blu-ray set is expected to be out for sale very soon, but will be missing most, if not all, of the extras fans had hoped for due to CBS/Paramount blocking their use – including a 2 hour special from the MacGyver podcast, which was specifically recorded for the Blu-ray, and the Mercedes commercial.
Ever since the Blu-ray release was announced by Koch Films back in August 2020 the fans have been excited at the prospect of not only having the full series in HD quality, but also having the extras they have longed for since the original DVD releases came out. Things like outtakes, interviews, Behind the Scenes videos were all on the wish list – sadly though, it seems almost none of these will be included now.
In one of his posts, Jano explains that Koch (who have since rebranded as Plaion Pictures) have been unable to acquire the appropriate licenses from CBS/Paramount for these extras because they don’t have adequate historical records of the licenses and contracts used at the time of original filming and so prefer to play it safe and just reject all requests. This is to insure other parties don’t come claiming rights to the material in the future. It needs to be remembered that the show originally aired on ABC which means extra materials we now take for granted, such as interviews, advertisements, etc. may have been created by them, so CBS have no authority to grant rights of use. This is particularly annoying in cases such as the Citan commercials, where Mercedes have given the OK for their use, provided that CBS allows it, even though the commercial was approved and created by Lee Zlotoff, but because the series is owned by CBS, they get the final say on what is and isn’t included in any box set.
Koch/Plation haven’t been able to acquire the licenses for the two TV movies yet, so are planning to leave a space in the box-set for the TV Movies disc so that when they do get the license they’ll release the disc separately at an affordable price. It also appears that the movies have not been remastered yet. There was some investigation into AI Upscaling them to HD quality which appeared to be having good results, but no confirmation has been made yet.
After waiting 3 years, the exclusion of the much-hoped-for extras will be quite a disappointment to many, however all is not lost. We know that work has been done to fix (where possible) minor errors noted from CBS’ first season box-set along along with others found in the provided data for the other seasons. We also know that there will be an interview with Murdoc actor, Michael Des Barres as well as some of the production team. Koch did try to get an interview setup with Richards Dean Anderson, but they were unable to get a response back in time to organize this.
Although the set wont have the extras fans were hoping for, it will have some (which is better than none) and we’re expecting high quality artwork and packaging on par with Koch/Plation previous boxsets which will include an information booklet written by Jano. There’s been no disclosure about whether subtitles will be included or if there will be other languages available on this set. At the very least we would expect it to have both German and English sound tracks.
Follow Jano’s updates at the German MacGyver Forums.
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