Posted Wed Aug 25, 2021 at 05:08 AM PDT by Matthew Hartman
Well, it's that time of year again. That glorious period of September through December where the summer ends, the cool weather starts, and studios absolutely crush physical media fans under the weight of a mass of new releases and special collector's editions. In particular, this year seems to be stacked for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases either getting their first outing on disc or are getting exciting new special editions. While this is a lot of fun, your wallet won't be happy. That list of Christmas presents you were going to get for other people - fold it back up and put it away. You're going to need every cent left in your bank account.
Now, this release slate is still pretty volatile. In the course of prepping this guide, many titles moved (Halloween 1-5 moved to the beginning of October, Columbia Classics Vol 2 moved to the end of the month) or haven't been officially announced yet or aren't up for pre-order. SO with that in mind, we'll update our listings and this guide if there are any significant changes as they come along. Since there's a lot of titles some with a variety of retailer exclusives, lets get to it.
Not to start things slowly, 4K fans get hit with a number of great releases right out of the gate. Zack Snyder's Justice League finally arrives on U.S. shores, John Carpenter's 1982 sci-fi creepy classic The Thing hits the format, while some more solo Hitchcock releases trickle out on top of the first four films of the original crew of Star Trek get 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray upgrades.
This week, the major heavy hitter is Frank Darabont's now-classic The Shawshank Redemption hitting 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. Boss Baby 2 is also a thing, and supposedly Highlander is also coming but info on that release has been so scanty I wouldn't be surprised if Lionsgate shifts that one down the road a little bit. Black Widow is also set to hit on the 14th, but that's also another one that's not up for pre-order anywhere yet. [UPDATE 8/26] The standard edition of Black Widow is finally up for pre-order on Best Buy. The SteelBook hasn't been posed yet, but as soon as it is we'll update the listing and the article.
The third week of September really picks up a lot of steam starting with one of the best (arguably the best by some) M. Night Shyamalan films Unbreakable finally getting a 4K upgrade, but then we're hit with a ton of retailer exclusives for Cruella, the latest Speedy and Upset franchise entry - F9: The Fast Saga, and topped off with Stanley Kubrick's iconic A Clockwork Orange
Just when you thought you'd be able to save up a few bucks and prepare you for the deluge coming your way in October - Sony had to go and delay their Columbia Classics Vol 2 set until the final week of the month. If that wasn't enough of a hit, Arrow Video's Children of the Corn, The Forever Purge, the standard edition of The Transformers: The Movie and a new SteelBook for Rob Zombie's 3 From Hell all hit at the same time.
As is the case with the home video marketplace these days - there are a lot of international 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases that'd we'd love to cover. Given the time it takes to ship and process through customs and all that nonsense, it's almost impossible to review ahead of street date, but we get to them as fast as we can!
That's all for now. Again - this list is pretty fluid at the moment. I wouldn't be surprised at all if one or a couple of these didn't have a release date change suddenly crop up. If when that happens we'll update our listings and this article ASAP.
We hope this 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release guide for September 2021 is helpful! Thanks again for all of your pre-orders, they really do go a long, long way towards helping us keep this little engine running.
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