I'm on my 2nd Blu-ray copy of The Ghost Writer from Netflix and both have displayed the same buggy behavior:

Once you get through the two previews, the menu with the page-flipping animation appears. If you select Play the screen goes dark for a few seconds and then the page-flipping animation reappears but without any menu controls. The movie does not play. If you select one of the featurettes in the Special Features section, the featurette will play but if you attempt to go back to the main menu you again get the page-flipping animation with no controls. If you try to Resume Movie from the featurette you will return to the featurette, not the movie.

The disc is hopelessly broken.

The Blu-ray disc itself is not the commercially available combo disc. Nothing printed on the disc indicates that it is a rental only version either.

Very frustrating. Has anyone received a Blu-ray copy of this film from Netflix that was playable? My Blu-ray player is a Sony BDP-S550.

It sounds like your player needs a firmware update more than anything else. If the disc plays, it is unlikely a physical pressing defect.

What you can try to do is go to Scene Selection and select chapter one and then it might play.

Thanks PhantomStranger, I knew someone would recommend a firmware update. That's the first thing I checked. I'm completely up to date.

Going to Scene Selection and choosing chapter one worked! Such a simple and obvious workaround. Thanks TheMovieman!

Dale

I remember reading this about the combo version too. Sounds like shoddy menu programming. Inhavent watched my rental yet but if I buy it will be the UK disc which I believe is uncut in some way.

That's interesting bunkaroo. I did some Googling and couldn't find any mentions of problems with this disc. If you can point me to dome discussion of the topic I'd be curious to read it.

I did learn that the language in the U.S. version was cut and/or altered in order to procure a PG-13 rating. The U.K. and Canadian versions are apparently uncut.

Yeah, there are quite a few F-bombs in Ghost Writer that are voiced over with "sodding" this and "bugger" that. Wasn't aware that it was done specifically for the American market, or that international versions had the unaltered dialogue. Interesting.

Optimum's releasing it in the UK on September 20th, but it'll almost assuredly be region-locked.

Now I'm thinking I should just wait for the UK disc to watch it.

Dalerb, do a search in this subforum for ghost writer - there's an official thread with some talk about the issue. I suspect not many people rented or bought this movie on Blu so there probably isn't a lot to Google for.