Holy Bat News!

Yesterday Warner Bros. announced that at long, long, LONG last, the 1966 Batman TV series is finally coming to DVD! The timing of this release couldn't be more perfect, as the DVD format is long past its prime and the series' target demographic is starting to die off.

For decades now the Batman series has been tied up in a Gordian knot of legal problems involving guest stars, music rights and the fact that 20th Century Fox owned the show, but Warner Bros. owned the characters.

But it looks like those problems have finally been worked out, and a home video release is imminent. Warner Bros. confirmed that a complete series box set will be released sometime this year.

I'm happy to hear this of course, but... this is a song I've heard many, many times over the past twenty years and every time it seems like it's going to happen, the deal falls through at the last minute. I've had my hopes cruelly dashed one too many times to allow myself to get too awfully excited about it. 

But it seems like it's probably really going to happen though this time. In the past year we've seen at least four different companies get the rights to make Batman '66 toys (at different scales), there's been a ton of other merchandise released, and DC is even publishing a comic based on the show. Something on the legal front has obviously changed to allow all this, so maybe this time the DVD news is true as well.

I hope it's really true this time, but I'm not gonna start dancing the Batusi just yet. I'll believe it when I'm holding the box set in my sweaty little paws.