New Release: Spartacus: Gods of the Arena Blu-ray and DVD

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena scene

Dustin Clare goes Roman in Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.

Anchor Bay Entertainment releases the Starz original TV series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena on Blu-ray and DVD on Sept. 13, 2011.

It’s about time, because we’re hungry for the over-the-top violence and sexual escapades — not to mention the drama and violence — that sold us on Starz’s wildly popular first go-round of the show, Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

A prequel to Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Gods of the Arena consists of six episodes set in Ancient Rome and focusing on the House of Batiatus (the gladiator training school — a “family” business — located in Capua, a city in Southern Italy) as it rises in the glow of its infamous, blood-thirsty champion Gannicus (Dustin Clare, Underbelly). It’s during these times that a young Batiatus (John Hannah, The Mummy) and his calculating wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless, TV’s Xena: Warrior Princess) scheme to overthrow the family patriarch and take control, ensuring that the school’s gladiators are in the highest demand.

Joining Spartacus: Blood and Sand’s returning stars Hannah, Lawless and Peter Mensah (300) are new cast members Clare, Jaime Murray (TV’s Dexter) and Marisa Ramirez (TV’s General Hospital).

The Blu-ray has a list price of $49.99 and the DVD at $39.98.

Both versions include these special features:

  • extended scenes
  • alternate endings
  • and “content too risque for cable TV” — Seriously?! What could be more risque than what was already shown?

Here’s the trailer, which offers a whole lot of the sex and violence we were talking about before:

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.