could this include wide temperature range and a 12 oclock (above) viewing angle?
what colours are available (for polariser/character, and backlight) - polariser and character colour is the same thing?
do the colours dictate whether transmissive/transreflective is best (eg white on blue is typically transmissive, is this because of better viewing in this config than a transreflective would have?)
is price likely to be similar to the 50+ price for the standard 40x2 or considerably more?
We can generally do pretty much any combination you want. Some variants of the backlight might not be tooled (like the white LED backlight, for example) but otherwise it is pretty open.
The pricing will not be wildly different. The main drawbacks from your point of view would be the increased lead time.
Well, to do anything truly "custom" there are always NRE charges and 1K piece minimum orders.
If it is a module that has been tooled once, but we do not normally stock it, then there is a 50 piece minimum. This minimum is per part number (three different modules--even if only slightly different would mean 150 modules minimum).