Fanboys and Pop Culture Geeks Rejoice: Spaced Is Coming to R1 DVD!

For many years, the only way that folks on this side of the pond could see Spaced — the brilliant, pop culture-literate sit-com that launched the careers of Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, and Nick Frost — was either to catch it on BBC America or to purchase a multi-region DVD player and pick up the “Definitive Collector’s Edition” from Amazon UK.

However, that’s all about to change. According to this AICN interview with Pegg, a Region 1 released of Spaced will be released in July, complete with commentaries from Pegg, Wright, Jessica Stevenson (Daisy), Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Diablo Cody, and Matt Stone. I am curious, though, as to how they resolved all of the copyright and trademark issues surrounding the show’s soundtrack.

This is particularly wonderful because it’ll give us Yanks a chance to see the original, in all of its brilliance, before the Americanized version, aka McSpaced, comes out on the airwaves.

For those you who don’t know anything about the whole “McSpaced” hullabaloo, folks are rather pissed off because the U.S. studio made no efforts to consult or contact the original series’ creators, but simply cashed in on their names (following the success of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) and handled the whole affair in rather poor taste. You can read Simon Pegg’s statement concerning the whole affair here.