Warner Home Video has released the specs for the upcoming release of Batman: Year One, the animated adaptation of the classic story by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, on DVD-and Blu-ray. Due in stores October 18, the same day as Batman: Arkham City, all signs point to this being the best DCU Animation release since the spectacular All-Star Superman.

Here's all the info:

Comics legend Frank Miller’s classic retelling of Batman’s gritty, formative days makes its full-length animated debut in Batman: Year One, the next entry in the popular, ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies. Produced by Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation, the all-new, PG-13 rated film arrives October 18, 2011 from Warner Home Video as a Blu-ray™ Combo Pack ($24.98 SRP) and DVD ($19.98 SRP), On Demand and for Download. Order due date is September 13, 2011.

Batman: Year One is based on the landmark 1987 DC Comics titles from 12-time Eisner Award winner Frank Miller and illustrator David Mazzucchelli. The film depicts young Bruce Wayne’s return to Gotham City in his first attempts to fight injustice as a costumed vigilante. The playboy billionaire chooses the guise of a giant bat to combat crime, creates an early bond with a young Lieutenant James Gordon (who is already battling corruption from inside the police department), inadvertently plays a role in the birth of Catwoman, and helps to bring down a crooked political system that infests Gotham.

Primetime television stars Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Ben McKenzie (Southland, The O.C.), Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) provide the core voices for Batman: Year One. Three-time Emmy® Award winner Cranston gives voice to young Jim Gordon, while McKenzie makes his animated voiceover debut as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Fanboy favorites Dushku and Sackhoff fill the roles of Selina Kyle/Catwoman and Detective Sarah Essen, respectively. Alex Rocco (The Godfather) is the voice of crime lord Carmine Falcone.

Animation master Bruce Timm is executive producer of Batman: Year One. Directors are Lauren Montgomery (Superman/Batman: Apocalypse) and Sam Liu (All-Star Superman) from a script penned by Academy Award® nominee Tab Murphy (Gorillas in the Mist, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse).

“Batman: Year One offers fans and newcomers alike an animated perspective on one of the true benchmark works in Batman comics history,” said Hersin Magante, Warner Home Video Marketing Manager, Family &, Animation.. “Bruce Timm and the Warner Bros. Animation team have gone to great lengths to realize Frank Miller’s ground-breaking, influential vision. Batman: Year One stands tall as the next DC Universe Animated Original Movie.”

Batman: Year One Blu-ray™ Combo Pack has almost 3 hours of exciting content, including:
•    Feature film
•    Sneak Peek at Justice League: Doom, the next DC Universe Animated Original Movie
•    DC Showcase Animated Original Short – “Catwoman”: This all-new entry to the growing canon of DC Universe animated shorts features the first first solo tale centered around Catwoman. The felonious feline’s adventure takes her through the seedy streets of Gotham City. Catwoman is voiced by Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse, Tru Calling).

•    Featurette –“Heart of Vengeance: Returning Batman to His Roots”: “The Dark Knight Returns” provided the denouement of Batman's life. Frank Miller's next seminal work would provide his near-mythic origin in “Batman: Year One.” This documentary uncovers the contemporary genius of Miller and the audience that was poised to appreciate the depths of his work.

•    Featurette –“Conversations with DC Comics”: The Batman creative team at DC Entertainment discusses the personal influence of “Batman: Year One” on their  careers. Batman producer Michael Uslan leads the chat amongst well-known writers, editors and artists of the Batman lore, focusing their dialogue on the darker, realistic interpretation of Batman’s origins by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli

•    Audio Commentary with Alan Burnett, Sam Liu, Mike Carlin and Andrea Romano
•    “Batman: Year One, Chapter 1” Digital Comic Book
•    Two bonus episodes from “Batman: The Animated Series,” handpicked by Bruce Timm
•    Standard and high definition versions of the feature film
•    Digital copy on disc of the feature film compatible with iTunes and Windows

BASICS
Street Date: October 18, 2011
Order Due Date: September 13, 2011
Languages: English and Spanish

Audio: Dolby Surround Stereo
Color / Closed Captioned
MPAA Rating:  PG

Batman: Year One
Blu-ray Combo Pack - $24.98 SRP
SD 1 Disc - $19.98 SRP

BD Combo Pack UPC: 1000165432 / 883929153602  
1-DiscUPC: 1000165430 / 883929153589

DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation are adapting the classic Batman: Year One to a DVD animated feature, set for release on October 18. Anticipation, and expectations, are sky-high for this one, based as it is on one of the seminal origin tale by the team of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli.

Year One sports a cast including geek icons Eliza Dushku as Catwoman and Katee Sackhoff as Sarah Essen, with Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston playing Lieutenant Gordon and Ben McKenzie of Southland as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

As reported yesterday, the DVD will also include a Catwoman 'DC Showcase' short, featuring a modern-day Catwoman, still voiced by Dushku, in an original story.

San Diego Comic Con attendees will have the opportunity to see Batman: Year One ahead of its release, as its scheduled to screen there. And today, Warners released the first trailer. I think it looks great, my hopes are high and DC proved that they can knock these sorts of releases out of the park with the groundbreaking All-Star Superman animated feature.

Check it out, and let me know your thoughts.

Check out this sneak peek at the modern-age look that Catwoman will be sporting in the short feature on the upcoming Batman: Year One DVD. In contrast to the obviously old-school look of the main feature, its clearly the Catwoman of today we're seeing in the original short, which sees the Catwoman of today (voiced by Eliza Dushku) taking on a Gotham City crime lord, a new character voiced by John DiMaggio (Futurama, Batman: Under the Red Hood).

Dushku will also be voicing Catwoman in the main feature, which also stars Ben McKenzie (Southland) as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as Lieutenant Gordon, and Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) as Sarah Essen.

Batman Year One is scheduled for release October 18.

Third time looks to be the charm for Green Lantern, whose multimedia franchise debut has been a bit of a stumble thus far with largely lukewarm-or-lower responses to both his motion picture debut and the DCU animated feature Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.

Bruce Timm to the rescue. The name Timm has been synonymous with masterful DC animation of the kind not seen since the Fleischer Bros. Superman shorts ever since the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series.

Now Timm, armed with CG animation and not just Hal Jordan but the Guardians and the entire GL Corps, prepares to shine Green Lantern's light on the Cartoon Network.

Take a look at this teaser for the upcoming Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and let me know what you think.

Superman: The Motion Picture Anthology is a huge highlight of this week's new DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Soar to New Hi-Def Heights with the Complete Movie Collection in Breathtaking Blu-ray Clarity and Sound! Deluxe 8-disc set with over 20 hours of bonus features!

Includes:
Superman The Movie
Superman The Movie: Expanded Edition
Superman II
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Superman III
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Superman Returns

The 8-disc Blu-ray collection also includes loads of extras, including more than 20 hours of featurettes. If you're wondering what I've been doing all day, I've been watching this. It is AWESOME.

Also out today is Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, a DCU Animated feature starring Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, an anthology of six interconnected stories similar to Batman: Gotham Knight.

And it doesn't skimp on the bonus features, either:

• Audio Commentary: Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio
• Only the Bravest: Tales of the Green Lantern Corps
• Why Green Lantern Matters: The Talent of Geoff Johns
• From Comicbook to Screen
• Bruce Timm’s Picks
• Batman: Year One Sneak Peek
• All-Star Superman Sneak Peek
• Virtual Comic Book

Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment are working on a direct-to-DVD animated adaptation of the classic Batman: Year One, by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. DC Animation's longtime casting wizard Andrea Romano has assembled a terrific roster of voices including Ben McKenzie (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Bryan Cranston (James Gordon), Eliza Dushku (Selina Kyle/Catwoman), Katee Sackhoff (Sarah Essen) and Alex Rocco (Carmine Falcone).

Here's DC's official synopsis of the epic story:

A young Bruce Wayne has spent his adolescence and early adulthood, traveling the world so he could hone his body and mind into the perfect fighting and investigative machine. But now as he returns to Gotham City, he must find a way to focus his passion and bring justice to his city. Retracing Batman’s first attempts to fight injustice as a costumed vigilante, we watch as he chooses a guise of a giant bat, creates an early bond with a young Lieutenant James Gordon, inadvertently plays a role in the birth of Catwoman, and helps to bring down a corrupt political system that infests Gotham.

Check out this video featuring interviews with cast and crew, character designs, and other behind the scenes goodness.

Wow. I love Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern, but you'd be forgiven for mistaking this clip of the upcoming DCU Animation release Green Lantern: Emerald Knights for a segment on The McLaughlin Group. They're talking. that's it. I mean, they are barely moving their bodies AT ALL, so it makes for a rather strange promo clip.

Thoughts?

Bleeding Cool says yes. Obviously, adapting material this beloved by so many this could be a triumph or a disaster. DC has proven to be particularly adept at adopting great material into animated features, especially with their recent All-Star Superman - an excellent benchmark for a project like this, as it too is iconic, challenging material that had a legion of hardcore fans standing ready to rip apart an adaptation that didn't do it justice.

Instead, the animated feature was embraced and hailed as a creative milestone and a new high-water mark in comics-based animation by pretty much everyone, myself included.

Perhaps emboldened by that, DC allegedly has scheduled a Dark Knight animated feature, after first adapting yet another Frank Miller classic, Batman: Year One.

Nathan Fillion is - Green Lantern! 

I can't even tell you how many years I've been dreaming of opening an article with that.

Well he may not be the big-screen, live-action GL, but Fillion voices Hal Jordan in the upcoming Green Lantern: Emerald Knights DCU animated movie. He is accompanyed by a cast that includes Elisabeth Moss, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Henry Rolins!

All-Star Superman served as notice that DC's animated DVD releases can easily go head-to-head with their live action movies, and GL: Emerald Knights looks like another classic in the making.

It arrives on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on June 7.