The Digital Bits is reporting in their Rumor Mill that Paramount has set a Centennial Collection DVD-only release of The African Queen for October 13th of this year. Blu-ray could follow later this year or next year. This is all unofficial and subject to change, but it's great news nonetheless. The African Queen has become on of the most conspicuous movies MIA on DVD, having not appeared on any digital format at all to this point.

Finally available somewhere other than a Best Picture marathon on TCM?

So why aren't we getting a Blu-ray at the same time? The reason this and other classic titles hit DVD first is that there's a lot more data to clean up in the much larger, higher-quality scan for Blu-ray. To put it bluntly, it'd look like shit if they took an image suitable for shrinking down to DVD resolution (which hides a lot of imperfections) and slapped it on a 1080p disc. It takes more time, but it's worth it. This is why Warner Bros. had to do a full re-restoration on The Wizard of Oz for the blu coming out this fall.