Christian Bale – Treasure Island DVD – Soon?

*Update* Treasure Island DVD review here!

Update Treasure Island 1990 DVD Pre-orders now available!!

Update information on the DVD Release here.

A few of you know that I really enjoy the 1990 made for Turner Television movie Treasure Island. It stars a young Christian Bale as Jim Hawkins and Charlton Heston as Long John Silver. Treasure Island 1990 also features Oliver Reed as Captain Billy Bones and Christoper Lee as Blind Pew (and boy is he creepy!). Some other faces you may recognize if you don’t know their names are Julian Glover and Pete Postlethwaite, two excellent character actors you have seen in a million things, including Indiana Jones and The Usual Suspects.

Treasure Island Film Score – The Chieftains

This version of Treasure Island is very faithful to the book and the quality of the acting performances is greatly enhanced by the beautiful setting, cinematography, and costume design. But perhaps the things that make it most unique, and indeed the element of the film I enjoy the most (mentioned in this old Treasure Island related-ish post) is the beautiful celtic-style musical score provided by The Chieftains. The music pairs perfectly with the pirate/nautical themes and shifts appropriately to match the mood presented in each scene. While both CDs from The Chieftains which feature music from the Treasure Island 1990 score(none feature all the music) an mp3 version of their Film Cuts CD featuring all 8 released tracks from the film is now available on Amazon.

Treasure Island DVD

For years now, fans of the film have clamored for a dvd release as the only legal means of purchase available are old Treasure Island (1990) [VHS]and laserdisc copies, which are of inferior quality and are often very overpriced due to their rarity. The Bootleg Laserdisc Preservation project (Laserdisc to DVD digital format with an attempt at clean-up) and the segmented Youtube upload are witness to both the popularity and poor quality of the copies out there. My copy is also an old taped from television version as well.

Good news has arrived for fans however on the Treasure Island DVD front. This posting on IMDB tipped me off. It points to the Warner Classic Facebook page which now owns the old Turner libraries. Strangely I had to Google search for the Facebook page as it didn’t turn up in the Facebook search bar. Warner Classic releases many old film, television and cartoon DVDs and a few months back their Facebook page confirmed that a Treasure Island DVD is coming. How long will we have to wait? It’s anybody’s guess, but I cannot wait. It would be really nice if it could get some cleanup as I have read that the old Turner library isn’t very well preserved. A full release of The Chieftains film score would be lovely as well though highly unlikely. Stay tuned for updates.

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