Because of the amount of things that Steven Spielberg is involved in, it’s not too hard to pin him down for a question or two, but sometimes he does get something about an older property that makes you grin with glee. According to Collider, Spielberg was queried about a high definition release of Jaws and he replied with, “Yes, there is. I’ve already seen some of it. I don’t have a date yet, but there’s a Blu-Ray absolutely in the works.”
That’s definitely good news, especially since this is a film fans have long wanted to have the best possible version of. But there’s always some amount of concern with Spielberg when it comes to his older films as he caught the Lucas bug many moons ago with the reworking and tinkering he did with E.T. when it came to the guns and so forth, though he at least did give us a choice in what we wanted. Interestingly, the man has come to terms with what he did then and according to a piece over at AICN, actually says what the majority of film fans want to hear and even makes it clearer by talking about E.T. and what was done there.
“[In the future] there’s going to be no more digital enhancements or digital additions to anything based on any film I direct. I’m not going to do any corrections digitally to even wires that show…At this point right now I think letting movies exist in the era, with all the flaws and all of the flourishes, is a wonderful way to mark time and mark history.”
“When people ask me which E.T. they should look at, I always tell them to look at the original 1982 E.T. If you notice, when we did put out E.T. we put out two E.T.s. We put out the digitally enhanced version with the additional scenes and for no extra money, in the same package, we put out the original ‘82 version. I always tell people to go back to the ’82 version.”
That’s as close as you’ll get to someone saying they made a mistake when it comes to something like this, but it does help to paint a picture of what future releases of his films will be like and gives hope to a solid E.T. Blu-ray in the future.
