Blu-ray Release Date: June 14, 2016
Price: Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Twilight Time
The 1975 sci-fi-tinged action-sports film Rollerball, one of the Seventies great dystopian future-shock flicks, receives a re-issue on Blu-ray from Twilight Time following a sell-out of its initial 2014 pressing.
In the future, there will be no war. But there will be Rollerball.
Rollerball posits a future—in this case a not-so-far-away 2018—in which war has been replaced by the titular game, a gladiatorial spectacle of violence that helps keep the global populace entertained and anesthetized. Emerging from this hard-hitting “sport” is a champion, Jonathan E (James Caan, Thief), whose individual expertise defeats the worldwide corporate leadership’s design: to emphasize the futility of individual effort. Corporate big-wigs (icily incarnated by The Fog‘s John Houseman) need Jonathan to retire, but Jonathan begins to have his own dangerous ideas.
Directed by Norman Jewison (Fiddler on the Roof) and written by William Harrison, the film also stars Moses Gunn (WUSA), John Beck (Sleeper) and Maud Adams (Octopussy).
Bonus features on the Twilight Time Blu-ray include the following:
-Isolated Score Track
-Audio Commentary with Director Norman Jewison
-Audio Commentary with Writer William Harrison
-From Rome to Rollerball: The Full Circle
-Return to the Arena: The Making of Rollerball
-TV Spots
-Trailers
-MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer
As supplier Twilight Time prints up only 3,000 copies of each title, be sure to keep an eye on the Twilight Time site or that of their distributor Screen Archives’s for the announcement of the prebook date (usually 2-3 weeks before the title’s street date) and get ready to reserve!
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