Grab your perfectly tailored corduroy blazer and consult your favorite stop-motion animated creature, because a deluxe Wes Anderson box set is arriving this fall, courtesy of Criterion.
“The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years” includes the first 10 films from the esoteric American director and is, according to the official description, a “momentous twenty-disc collector’s set” that includes new 4K masters, over 25 hours of special features and 10 illustrated books in a deluxe clothbound edition. It will be available on September 30. You can preorder it now.
Included in the set are new 4K digital masters of “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” “The Darjeeling Limited,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Isle of Dogs” and “The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun,” supervised and approved by director Wes Anderson, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks. The 4K discs will have Dolby Vision HDR, which is very exciting.
The only missing movies from the collection are “Asteroid City,” “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More” and “The Phoenician Scheme,” which hits theaters this week. Something tells us they’ll be a part of the Criterion Collection soon enough.
As for special features, Criterion is noting that it will include 25 hours of special features, including “audio commentaries, interviews, documentaries, deleted scenes, auditions, short films, home movies, commercials, storyboards, animation tests, archival recordings, still photography, discussions/analyses, and visual essays.”
While many of the titles have gotten the Criterion treatment previously, “Isle of Dogs” and “The French Dispatch” are new to the collection, and none of the movies have been re-released in 4K. (Those two will also be available to purchase individually.)
Additionally, the set will include essays by Richard Brody, James L. Brooks, Bilge Ebiri, Moeko Fujii, Kent Jones, Dave Kehr, Geoffrey O’Brien, Martin Scorsese and Erica Wagner. The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years, will set you back a whopping $499.95 if you buy it new. But real heads know that a 50% Criterion sale hits Barnes & Noble book shops in November. Earmark it now.
