Hi there MITM97,
Thanks for your message!
Well, as you may have read near the end of
this thread (from page 23 onwards), the complete series S 1-7 is being released right now on DVD in France and Germany in widescreen (with better image quality than the earlier British releases), and with additional extras for seasons after S1, such as looks behind the scenes and an interview with creator Linwood Boomer.
Details of the German releases (roughly identical to the French ones) can be found
here.
The French and German DVDs both feature the original soundtrack, including all the original songs (no replacements), alongside a French and German dubbed dialogue track respectively.
There are no English subtitles, however, just French and German ones respectively, because this also happens to be a rather expensive copyright issue. And they're all region 2 of course, so you need some sort of region-free player (hardware or software) if you're in the US.
Still, from what I've heard from all distributors (British, French and German), Fox has put only minimal effort into going through their vaults and coming up with decent episode masters, let alone those extras we all long for. In this sense, we must be extremely glad that we have the episodes now in this type of resolution, and with those extras, even though we know there's lots more stuff that Fox has been reluctant to release so far. And believe me, especially the Malcolm France team has invested a great deal of effort into contacting and collaborating with Fox.
Another problem with some of these potential bonus features, like cast interviews and music videos, is that there are other companies involved, like television networks or music publishers, which actually compounds the copyright issues and thus the costs.
So I believe it's quite unlikely any other releases will see the light of day, also because 'Malcolm' on DVD hasn't exactly been a runaway success so far. Blu-ray hardly appears to be an option, not just because the DVDs are a tough sell as they are, but also because of technical limitations. MITM was shot on Super 16mm film stock, not 35 mm, 70 mm, or digital high definition, so the image quality may actually look worse on Blu-ray.
And it's highly unlikely Fox would consider re-scanning the image, and run the risk of such an expensive release.
But of course, we can always keep hoping for a miracle!
Best wishes,
Rich
