The one who started it all is starting things anew once more.
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the world’s first full-length animated film, will receive a special re-release as part of a new video line from Walt Disney Home Entertainment. “Snow White” will be the first entry in the Walt Disney Signature Collection, expected to be a continuing tradition spotlighting the studio’s finest animated features. It will arrive to digital HD on January 19 before landing on Blu-ray February 2.
This debut installment in the Signature Collection contains several new bonus features in addition to extras carried over from previous “Snow White” releases. The newcomers, which Disney has yet to give descriptions for, include:
- In Walt’s World
- Iconography
- A new episode in the recurring @DisneyAnimation series
- The Fairest Facts of Them All
- Snow White in Seventy Seconds
- Disney’s First Feature
To welcome the film’s return from the fabled Disney vault, ABC will air the all-new “Behind the Magic: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” on Sunday, December 13, at 8 p.m. Narrated by Ginnifer Goodwin (who plays Snow White on ABC’s “Once Upon a Time”), the one-hour special will spotlight appearances by John Lasseter, Richard Sherman, Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck, and more as viewers get a backstage peek behind the making of Disney’s first movie. This continues the surprising but wonderful recent trend of ABC producing new backstage specials that take audiences behind the scenes of some of animation’s most beloved titles, following in the footsteps of last year’s “Frozen” special and this month’s “Charlie Brown” 50th anniversary and “Toy Story” 20th anniversary (airing December 10).
Disney recently concluded its Diamond Edition line with the October release of “Aladdin.” The Walt Disney Signature Collection follows in the footsteps of Platinum Editions (2001-2009) and Diamond Editions (2009-2015), both of which coincidentally honored “Snow White” as their premiere volumes. These sets go more in depth with their bonus material than any other Disney release each year. If history is to repeat itself, in the future we might expect the Signature Collection to include “Pinocchio,” “Bambi,” “Cinderella,” “Peter Pan,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” “The Jungle Book,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” and “The Lion King.” However, it could be too early to make succinct predictions about specific titles depending on which direction Disney takes with this new line. Is it exclusive to titles Walt Disney personally worked on? Will it delve into the recent revival of animated features that many claim are just as good as the studio’s best work? We shall see.
In the meantime, make sure to catch “Behind the Magic” December 13 on ABC followed by the arrival of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to home video this winter.
You can pre-order the collection here.
Are you excited for the new Walt Disney Signature Collection? What other films would you like to see ABC spotlight in documentaries?
Edited by: Hannah Wilkes
