November 11, 2014

Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown Finally Come to DVD in 2015

Fans have been asking about DVD releases of the third and fourth Peanuts theatrical movies for years, and at last Paramount will release the films on DVD next year, according to news reports on TVShowsOnDVD.com (here and here).

Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977) is set to be released on February 10, 2015; there will apparently be no bonus features. The Amazon pre-order listing claims the DVD will be widescreen.

The fourth movie, Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (1980) doesn't have a firm release date yet, but is planned for October 2015. (TVShowsOnDVD.com reports that Paramount says they're delaying until that time in order to tie the release in with the 35th anniversary of the film... which is kind of odd since the film first hit theaters in June 1980.)

The first two Peanuts movies, A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969) and Snoopy Come Home (1972), have been available on DVD for some time, and will be re-released on February 10, 2015 as well - most likely those will just be re-packagings with no new features.

11 comments:

Matt Burb said...

I am surprised how long it took for this announcement to finally come.

Jerry Horne said...

'Race' is up for pre-order at Amazon.

Scott McGuire said...

Thanks, Jerry, I've updated the blog post.

Anonymous said...

Why wouldn't it be widescreen? It was a theatrical release.

GaryBoz said...

Sweet! My son loves the very old VHS copy I have of this one. It is about time :)

Matt Burb said...

And here's something I forgot in my comment above: I actually still have the 1996 VHS release of "Bon Voyage" somewhere, but it's unfortunately nearing the point that it will stop working because it's been played so much. In fact, I think the tape inside got caught in my VCRs previously.

Scott McGuire said...

Anonymous: All four movies were originally created and animated in the 1.33:1 (aka 4:3) aspect ratio, and matted when projected. This means a widescreen presentation will actually remove part of the picture as seen in the VHS releases. So it would not necessarily be wrong for the DVDs to be fullscreen.

In fact, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" and "Snoopy Come Home" are cropped to 1.78:1 (16:9) on the Paramount DVDs, and look cramped; a 1.66:1 cropping probably would have been more suitable. (One only has to look at the end credits on both movies - which are not cropped nearly as much - to see that 1.78:1 may not have been the best choice.)

Anonymous said...

About Time ... With the countdown to thwe new movie in 2015 I hope Warner Bros release the handful of specials still MIA...

Anonymous said...

Excellent!...and about time! I hope they put "What Have We Learned CB?" as a bonus on "Bon Voyage CB" since it tied in with the film as an epilogue.

Scott McGuire said...

It's not very likely that "What Have We Learned" will show up as a bonus on the "Bon Voyage" DVD, because the home video rights to each are owned by different companies (Warner and Paramount, respectively). They could cut a deal, so it's not impossible, but that sort of thing doesn't happen very often. Which is too bad, because it would definitely make sense to put both on the same disc.

Anonymous said...

You're most likely right, Scott. Here's hoping we see a 1980s DVD collection parts 1 & 2 before the decade is over.