News over the weekend indicates DVDs may be coming soon

Wow — looks like it's for real this time!  We received reports over the last 24 hours that there are strong indications that the Back to the Future DVDs will be released in Region 2 in January 2001, which would indicate that they would be released slightly prior to that in Region 1.  It seems that Universal has inserted a flyer into the new Jaws DVD for Region 2 (Western Europe and Japan) that announces the three BTTF DVDs for this coming January.  Thus, this apparently could possibly mean that Region 1 (United States and Canada) could actually see the discs in time for Christmas 2000 or shortly thereafter since R1 titles are usually released slightly ahead of R2 releases.

Here's what we know so far:

• 07/16/2000: DVDZone2.com, an online European DVD superstore, is apparently now taking pre-orders for all three films on their website through September 2000.  This is the first site we've seen taking orders for Back to the Futur, Back to the Futur 2, and Back to the Futur 3 in any region.

• 07/16/2000: TheDigitalBits.com reported the following:  "We've got pretty good word from our sources that Universal is prepping a DVD release of the Back to the Future Trilogy for January, 2001. And one of our readers in Region 2 sent over a scan of a "coming soon" insert that he found in his Dutch DVD copy of Jaws. It lists a slew of upcoming Columbia and Universal DVD titles in Region 2, and has all of the Back to the Future films as slated for January, along with Columbia TriStar's The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. Region 2 dates for new releases are often very similar to street dates for Region 1, if sometimes a little bit later, so it's reasonable to expect domestic U.S. releases around the same time. Watch for official announcements in the coming months."

  

• 07/17/2000: VideoTropic.com reports this morning:  "Finding ourselves deep into "Ain't-It-Cool-News" territory, we received a note from a reader in the Netherlands who works for a printing shop often used by Universal for one-sheets and promo materials. Last week his shop received an order for a run of 4-color offsets: promotional materials aimed at dealers which state a release date of January 15th for the Back To The Future trilogy. No prebook cutoff date was mentioned. Though we would have preferred something a little closer to the metal, such as the actual DVD cover or insert, this date jibes well with the January release date mentioned on the insert accompanying the Region 2 edition of Jaws, due out next Monday, as reported by Digital Bits. Through purely circumstantial fuzzy logic, this January 15th date also infers a very late Q4 2000 release date for Region 1."