Fans To Press WB For SUPERBOY DVDs
The Official Superboy DVD Campaign is in effect, with a new website, message board, promotional video, and plans for more to come.
Superboyhomepage.com went live on March 10th, and is trying to rally fans "to submit...flyers and postcards to the top heads and executives at Warner Bros Studios in the hopes of convincing them to release" Seasons Two through Four of the cult classic live-action TV series Superboy on DVD.
The new site features a brand new message board, plus an announcement about plans for an online petition to go up the week of March 17th.
YouTube's SuperboyRob, who has created montages of clips from The Adventures of Superboy in the past, now has posted a promotional video of scenes from the second and third seasons, produced exclusively for the DVD movement.
The 1988-92 syndicated series Superboy was the brain child of Ilya Salkind, who, with his father Alexander, produced the first three Superman movies and 1984's Supergirl.
The first season starred 22-year-old newcomer John Haymes Newton as Superboy/Clark Kent, with the stunning Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang. But, by Season Two, Newton had been replaced by Gerard Christopher, a devoted comic book fan who, at age 30, was older than Christopher Reeve, Dean Cain and Brandon Routh were when they began playing SuperMAN. While on Superboy, Christopher added "producer" and "writer" to his resume'. With the third season, the show's title officially became The Adventures of Superboy.
Due in part to increasingly higher-quality effects and scripts by comic book writers--including Mike Carlin, Andrew Helfer, Denny O'Neil, Cary Bates, J.M. DeMatteis and Mark Evanier--the show's ratings still were strong in Season Four. However, a lien filed by Warner Bros. brought Superboy to an unexpected end in 1992.
Warner Bros. wanted all film and television rights to Superman back under their control. Unfortunately, the rights to the Superboy TV show weren't so clear, because it was distributed in the U.S. by Viacom. In an interview with Superman Homepage, Ilya Salkind acknowledged that the legal battle between Viacom, Warner Brothers, and the Salkinds was the reason the show has not been rerun on television or released to home video. The dispute was recently settled, and, on February 7, Salkind stated that "It is a matter of time that the rest of the series will hit DVD."
Between 1992 and 2006, the only way to see Superboy in the U.S. was on bootleg VHS cassettes and DVDs sold online. In 1999, Gerard Christopher began offering VHS tapes of the series created from the master tapes of episodes in which he starred. Video tapes were sold on his website and at personal appearances. Christopher offered a complete Season Two DVD set, starting in June 2004, with plans for sets of Seasons Three and Four in the future. When Warner Home Video announced the official release of Season One, Christopher ceased sales of his self-produced DVD sets.
Supporters of the new DVD campaign hope to get endorsements from Salkind and Christopher before submitting their petition to Warner Home Video. They invite all fans to visit the Superboy Homepage and to get involved.
"It's about time that WB got a REAL white hot flame lit under their incompetent asses," TALOS posted on the Comments board at Superman Homepage. "More power to y'all guys and girls!"
There is, however, at least one more hitch, of which Salkind himself recently offered a reminder: the Superboy character currently is the subject of a legal battle between Time Warner, DC Comics, and the estate of Superman/Superboy co-creator Jerry Siegel, and this dispute may delay any DVD release of the remaining Superboy seasons indefinitely.
[Thanks to STEVE YOUNIS at Superman Homepage, and to Wikipedia.]