New Line Home Ent. Launches Interactive DVD Brand

Los Angeles, Calif. — Recently renamed New Line Home Entertainment plans to expand the DVD movie format with a series of enhanced-disc releases featuring extensive interactive "extras," and has launched a new distribution label called Infinifilm to help distinguish the special releases from New Line's Platinum Edition DVD line.

The first Infinifilm release is slated for July 10 with the DVD title "Thirteen Days," a historical drama about the Cuban missile crisis.

The disc will showcase many of the features Infinifilm plans to include in its DVD releases, including a "Beyond The Movie" section featuring special informational video clips that viewers can call up while watching the main feature.

With the press of a button on the remote control viewers can jump to the info clip with background information on a particular scene in the movie. When the clip is finished, viewers are returned to the point in the movie where they left off.

"Beyond The Movie" segments in "Thirteen Days" will include such things as historical commentaries, short documentaries on the making the film or on the history of the subject, and subtitle tracks with informational extras that run throughout the film.

Another section of extras is called All Access Pass and features such things as the filmmaker's commentary, deleted scenes with director commentary and scene deconstructions to reveal visual effects.

All Infinifilms will include Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 channel surround sound and will feature widescreen aspect ratios.

The "Thirteen Days" disc will carry a $26.98 suggested retail price.

The mission of the label is to deliver to movie enthusiasts an interactive viewing experience to open a new level of DVD movie watching, said Meghan Mahoney, New Line Home Entertainment senior marketing manager.

Mahoney said the Infinifilm label resulted from extensive consumer studies during the past year that showed "people are interested in how many features can be incorporated into a disc. People like a wide array of capabilities. They also want these features to be very easy to use, so we have developed very easy to find and use navigation tools on each title."

Unlike some other interactive DVD titles, Infinifilm wasn't interested in developing software that needs special processors to access bonus areas. She said all Infinifilm discs will have segments accessible by DVD movie players as well as DVD-ROM enabled PCs.

Following "Thirteen Days," Infinifilm will release "Fifteen Minutes" with Robert DeNiro and "Blow" featuring Johnny Depp.