This is so exciting! Terrence Malick is my favorite director and The Thin Red Line is one of my Top Ten Favorite movies of all time. The news leaked a few weeks ago, but I was waiting for the cover artwork to get released before writing about it. I actually thought Fox or someone would release a ten-year anniversary edition in 2008 but that never happened. I may already own the crap Fox War Classics version of this film on DVD, but I also own two versions of Malick’s The New World. so I have no qualms about buying this again.

DVD/Blu-Ray specs after the cut.

The Thin Red Line

Terrance Malick

Criterion # 536, On DVD and Blu-ray, September 28, 2010

After directing two of the most extraordinary movies of the 1970s,Badlands and Days of Heaven, American artist Terrence Malick disappeared from the film world for twenty years, only to resurface in 1998 with this visionary adaptation of James Jones’s 1962 novel about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal. A big-budget, spectacularly mounted epic, The Thin Red Line is also one of the most deeply philosophical films ever released by a major Hollywood studio, a thought-provoking meditation on man, nature, and violence. Featuring a cast of contemporary cinema’s finest actors—Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, and Woody Harrelson among them—The Thin Red Line is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the experience of combat that ranks as one of cinema’s greatest war films.

Disc Features

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Terrence Malick and cinematographer John Toll (with DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition)
• New audio commentary featuring Toll, production designer Jack Fisk, and producer Grant Hill
• Outtakes from the film
• Video interviews with several of the film’s actors, including Kirk Acevedo, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, Tom Jane, Elias Koteas, Dash Mihok, and Sean Penn
• New video interview with casting director Dianne Crittenden, featuring original audition footage
• New interview with composer Hans Zimmer
• New video piece featuring interviews with editors Billy Weber, Leslie Jones, and Saar Klein
• An interview with writer James Jones’s daughter Kaylie Jones
• World War II newsreels featuring footage from Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Sterritt and a 1963 essay by James Jones on war films

special thanks to Criterion Cast for all the info. The film will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in September and is available for pre-order here.