Casanova cropped by Disney! Why?

[AirWiz]

I first saw Casanova on Starz HD on DirecTV. It's possibly the best looking thing I've seen since I went HiDef last summer. It filled my 1.78 ratio TV with incredible detail and color of Venice. Beautiful exteriors and interiors that bristled from floor to ceiling and everything in between including the costumes. Every scene was worthy of a hi def slideshow. I jumped online and ordered the BD disc immediately.

When I played the BD, I wasn't surprised to see the letterboxed 2.40 version. I've come to accept that in order to see the "whole" movie as it was filmed. But When I compared it side by side with the Starz version for quality, I discovered the awful truth. Disney had effectively cropped the top and bottom of the movie by presumably using the theatrical release print to make their transfer. IMDB shows that the movie was shot in 35mm in a near 1.33 aspect. It then went to a "digital intermediate" format which is a 1:85 ratio selective crop. The theatrical print, of course, is a further selective crop down to 2.40 ratio.

So my question to whoever is in the biz is: Why would Disney put only 3/4 of the available movie in a 2.40 format that's meant to be viewed on a 1.85 screen? It makes it doubly distracting to know that there's a bunch of the movie missing under the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

Gone are the beautiful floors and ceilings, the skies and foregrounds, even some of the actors heads and bodies. Oh the Humanity!