This week’s edition of The Digital Wire is positively epic and packed to capacity with major new release announcements. We’ve got some horror, some drama, some more horror, even more horror, action, comic book animation, a 3D documentary starring one of the world’s highest-grossing filmmakers, and finally….horror. Well we are getting pretty close to Halloween and all.

Below you’ll find info on several future home video releases complete with technical specs, release dates, and links to pre-order at Amazon. We would greatly appreciate it if you use those links to order because a small percentage of each order helps keep this website running at max power. The cover art for certain titles has yet to be finalized.

The Digital Wire returns and is packing more DVD and Blu-ray announcements than usual. This week we’ve got a brain pan-searing cornucopia of summer blockbusters and offbeat indie flicks as well as a mammoth box set guaranteed to bring joy into the life of that Doctor Who fan close to your heart.

Below you’ll find info on several future home video releases complete with technical specs, release dates, and links to pre-order at Amazon. We would greatly appreciate it if you use those links to order because a small percentage of each order helps keep this website running at max power. The cover art for certain titles has yet to be finalized.

Snowpiercer
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Screenwriters: Bong Joon-ho, Kelly Masterson
Cast: Chris Evans, Kang-ho Song, Go Ah-sung, Jamie Bell, Alison Pill, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer
The Weinstein Company
Rated R | 125 Minutes
Release Date: June 27, 2014

Directed and co-written by South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother), Snowpiercer is based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette.

In 2014, an experiment to counteract global warming causes an ice age that kills nearly all life on Earth. The only survivors are the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine. A class system is established on the train, with elites inhabiting first-class while the poor are sequestered to the slums of the tail section.

2031. Tail inhabitants prepare for the latest in a series of rebellions. Curtis (Chris Evans) leads Edgar (Jamie Bell), Tanya (Octavia Spencer), and the rest of the tail inhabitants in revolt, forcing their way through several train cars to the prison section. There, they release prisoner Namgoong Minsu (Kang-ho Song), the man who built the doors dividing each car, and his daughter Yona (Go Ah-sung). They offer him Kronol, an addictive drug, as payment for unlocking the remaining doors.

The months-long stand-off between independent film world titan Harvey Weinstein and South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (The Host) over the length of the director’s preferred cut of his English-language debut Snowpiercer has finally been resolved.

The film’s planned U.S. theatrical release had been held up for quite some time as Weinstein had made known his intentions to substantially shorten the running time of Snowpiercer by around 20 minutes, a strategy the Oscar-winning producer and distributor believed would help its chances at finding a wider audience Stateside. Rumors had been floated that the re-cut version would feature added narration written by famed comics scribe and novelist Neil Gaiman (Sandman) to help bridge narrative gaps that would have been created by the loss of several scenes crucial to the story.

If and when we see Bong Joon-ho‘s Snowpiercer, it’s very unlikely that it will be the cut that the director approved, but the cut that The Weinstein Company wants you to see. The war of the cuts have been going on for quite some time, with Joon-ho being diplomatic about the the 20 minutes that the distributor wants to cut from the film. But recently the director has been extremely unhappy with how his film is being treated, and is now claiming that his cut is better than the Weinstien’s.

The war of words has really affected the film’s domestic marketing, for which there is none. Of the trailers that have been released, a lot of them have been international trailers. Even with Chris Evans starring in the film, it’s unlikely to gain the box office traction a sci-fi film would normally get. But Joon-ho’s statements could be just the push needed to get this film out there sooner than later. Hit the jump to see what the director had to say about his version when compared to Weinstein’s.

Snowpiercer, The Host director Bong Joon-ho‘s first English-language directed film, will open in Korean theaters on August 1, but the film has yet to receive a U.S. release date. We’ve already seen concept art pieces revealing what the world looks like outside of the train, and some pieces that give us an inside look too. Early promotional items from The Weinstein Company suggested that the film could open some time later this summer. But with the first trailer for the film having just debuted, it looks like that tentative release will be pushed back a few more months.

The film takes place on a train that runs around a now icy dystopian earth. Each car presents a social class, the further back you are on that train, the lower the class. The trailer gives us our first hand look at what it is like to live aboard the Snowpiercer. Chris Evans is a resident of one of the lower class cars, and he leads a resistance group that will break through each car until they reach the engine, where darker secrets lie. Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Alison Pill, Ed Harris, Octavia Spencer, Kang-ho Song, and Ko Asung, also star.

Check out the new trailer below.

Snowpiercer is somewhere in my top 10 most anticipated films of 2013. If you haven’t heard of it, well, it’s because the small sci-fi thriller of sorts directed by The Host’s Joon-ho Bong has gone under most people’s radars. Not so much as of a leaked photo has even made it online. But now we are getting a better look at the film, which takes place in a world where a failed experiment caused catastrophic climate changes that forced its inhabitants to live aboard a giant train that braves against the harsh perpetual winter.

Starring in Bong’s American debut are Chris Evans, Octavia Spencer, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Ewen Bremner, Alison Pill, John Hurt, and Ed Harris. In addition to those actors, The Host star Kang-ho Song also has a role in the film and is featured in this newly released movie still. Also released was more concept art, which you can see here below.

Among the many films that I am anticipating to come out in 2013, Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer is my most anticipated film. The premise of the film follows on a large number of survivors living on a train called the Snowpiercer after a failed experiment went horribly wrong and caused the entire Earth to be covered in ice. Sounds pretty cool right? Well it gets better. The train is a virtual metaphor of the class system. The further back you are in the train, the lower the class. If you’re not familiar with Joon-ho’s name, then I suggest you check out both Mother and The Host, for he is the man who directed both films.

Snowpiercer is slated to hit some time this summer, and before we can get to see anything that resembles a trailer, concept art, a teaser poster, and a track from the film’s score conducted by Marco Beltrami have been released.

Check them out below.