Little Shop: The Blu-Ray?

NEWS FLASH!  UNEXPECTED TOTAL ECLIPSE!

The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Frank Oz (illustrated with links from yours truly) in which he discusses, at length, the decision to change the ending of Little Shop of Horrors and explains why it is that the black & white workprint was all that was available for release on DVD back in 1998.  (Apparently the preview copy of the original ending was disassembled when the new footage was edited in, and contrary to Geffen's supposition the clips were not stored.)



But more importantly, ninja spies attending Oz's Q&A at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 16 report that Oz confirmed that the original negatives for the sequence do exist and that there will be a Blu-Ray available for Halloween 2012!  Audio recording of the interview will be made available shortly is now uploaded (thanks to Kawlen Dram!).  I am overjoyed at this news, as I've been obsessed with that "lost ending" for 26 years now!  Just in time for my birthday, too.

Oz's interview also sheds light on why the Blu-Ray will apparently be billed as "The Intended Cut" instead of "The Original Cut" or "The Director's Cut."  The true original cut was not saved, so this will be a new edit of the ending "as intended," and Frank Oz himself is not involved in the project, so it's not a true director's cut.  He also mentioned that he doesn't know if other lost clips such as the "Meek Shall Inherit" dream sequence and shots of the plant eating Steve Martin's head still survive.

In other news, it appears that Little Shop will be remade with personnel from Glee and the charming Joseph Gordon Levitt as Seymour.  I receive this news with mixed feelings, as I fear a slick, homogenized CGI-fest.  But JoGoLev would make a great Seymour.  I'd be much more interested in seeing a bloody and weird non-musical remake of the Roger Corman black comedy.

ORIGINAL POST:

Some interesting things are afoot in the world of Little Shop of Horrors.

At his career retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image last fall, director Frank Oz said that WB Home Video is working on an original-ending Blu-Ray for the musical.  This got everybody's hopes up, but there has been no announcement or confirmation of this project - until now, it seems.  Eagle eyes have caught this mention of a PG-13 rating for something called Little Shop of Horrors - The Intended Cut for late 2012.  If this is true, then it will be truly epic!  This news is so exciting I can hardly even bring myself to think about it, just in case my hopes are dashed once more. 

Just in case this is really happening and anybody from WB might be searching the net for "what the people want," here's my Blu-Ray wish list of what I'd love to see on the disc, including the very rarely seen storyboards by the legendary comic book and concept artist, Mike Ploog.

To tide us over, the original 1960 film is being released on Blu-Ray soon from Legend.  Let's hope this is a nice presentation of the original, which is in the public domain and thus suffers from a glut of cheapie home video releases of appalling quality.  (For my money, the best version currently available is the one packaged with Trailers From Hell Volume 2 - and you get a ton of entertaining vintage trailers, too!)

And here's one more taste of Little Shop goodness: a TV spot for the LA run of the original stage show.