Avatar (2009) and The Abyss (1989) are finally getting a physical 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release next year, according to Bill Hunt, editor-in-chief of The Digital Bits, a resource that describes itself as the internet’s premier information website regarding DVD and Blu-ray releases.
“Our sources continue to report that Disney is likely to release both James Cameron’s original Avatar (2009) and his long-awaited remaster of The Abyss (1989) on physical 4K Ultra HD early next year,” Hunt wrote in an update on Tuesday.
“Both titles are expected to arrive on disc at the same time as the home video release of the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, which debuts in theaters in just 9 days,” he added. “We don’t have any details as to which version(s) of The Abyss this release may include, but when we’re able to confirm we’ll certainly post an update here.”
Many of James Cameron’s films remain unavailable in the Ultra HD Blu-ray format, including Aliens, Titanic, the original Terminator, and True Lies, the latter of which wasn’t even available on standard Blu-ray until the Spain release that emerged this year.
Cameron revealed that a 4K transfer for The Abyss was completed last year in an interview with Space.com on December 18, 2021:
Yeah, we finished the transfer and I wanted to do it myself because Mikael [Salomon] did such a beautiful job with the cinematography on that film. It is truly, truly gorgeous cinematography. That was before I started to assert myself in terms of lighting and asking the cinematographer to do certain things. I’d compose with the camera and choose the lenses, but I left the lighting to him. He did a remarkable job on that movie that I appreciate better now than I did even as we were making it.
“A civilian diving team is enlisted to search for a lost nuclear submarine and faces danger while encountering an alien aquatic species,” reads a description for The Abyss, which stars Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn, who also played Kyle Reese in Cameron’s Terminator films.
Harris and Biehn also appeared in The Rock, Michael Bay’s 1996 action film starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery.