The Mortician 3D finally gets 3D Blu-ray release

After struggling to get distribution, Gareth Robert’s gritty 3D film noir, The Mortician, gets a 3D home release although US audiences will only get the 2D option.

The Mortician 3D is set in a bankrupt American city where the infrastructure has collapsed and law and order are distant memories. A mortician’s life (Method Man) is changed when a woman’s body arrives to his table and stirs up memories of his past.  The film stars hip hop musician Method Man (HBO’s “The Wire”), Dash Mihok (Punisher: War Zone), Wendell Pierce (HBO’s “Treme”) and David Jensen (I Love You Phillip Morris) with Dana Fuchs (Across the Universe) and Edward Furlong (The Green Hornet). 

The £2.5 million film battled to get distribution last year, which Director Gareth Roberts put down to distributors reluctant to take a risk on a 3D film that was not animation or sci-fi.

Speaking to 3D Focus last year, Gareth Roberts said…

“I think it's too early to have done what we tried to do with The Mortician, precisely because it is not an effects movie and it's not an animation. The buyers are saying 'What is our audience for this? We can't identify an audience for this'. They are not buying it or, if they are buying it, they are buying it in 2D.”

Roberts continued to say, “We would have liked to have been hailed as the first independent drama in 3D but we haven't found a distributor who is willing to take that risk, put their neck on the line and spend the money to promote it.”

Skip forward several months and perhaps enthused by the string of 3D box office successes, Lionsgate will be releasing the 3D Blu-ray in Europe on February 14th which includes a special feature – “Autopsy: Dissecting The Mortician.”  The Mortician will also be available on demand but perhaps due to the slower uptake of 3D in America, only the 2D version will be released there.

"I am delighted that audiences will finally have the opportunity to see the film, and in certain territories experience the 3D world we have created, in their own homes.” Gareth Roberts told 3D Focus. “I hope that the immersive qualities we have explored in our approach to 3D strikes a resonance with audiences, and it's subtleties draws them into the story in a visceral and un-selfconscious manner."

The movie, which was shot entirely on location in New Orleans in 2009, used the Element Technica Quasar rig and the cinematographer was Michael McDonough.

The Mortician trailer (2D version)

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