The Lost Art of the DVD Extra
The Lost Art of the DVD Extra
Even casual fans are lured by a high-quality product that doesn’t exist on streaming platforms.
Fans were quick to dub Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers this summer’s undeniable hit, circulating fan edits and memes about (spoiler!) throuples, and writing fan fiction en masse on sites like Archive of Our Own and Wattpad.
The movie’s production team invited the stans behind the scenes with a video diary series on Instagram, as well as with new featurettes about some of the more technical aspects of filming certain tennis scenes popping up on X.
But when the Challengers Blu-ray was announced on May 16, it included no bonus content—it’s not even being released in 4K.
Fans weren’t just upset, they were downright baffled. Cinephiles voiced their deep disappointment in the release—specifically citing the lack of bonus features, cast commentary, interviews, and gag reels.
The outcry makes it clear that fans want these extras to exist as more than just ephemeral fodder on social media. They want ownership over the intimate details of a movie they love. A comment on the Challengers Instagram isn’t enough; fans want the high-res film clips of the three leads being cute together behind the scenes to watch for all eternity. So why won’t these studios give that to them?
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“It’s no longer simply about men in their basement wanting to see Iron Man,” John Rotella, SVP of sales at Shout! Studios, said. “You have to be really, really careful. You have to really do your due diligence in really capturing everything. So you have to have people on staff that are hyperdetailed and fully aware of the extras that you need.”
More and more of these labels are finding ways to pack value into their offerings, with their own teams sourcing interviews and photos, commissioning new art, and more. Some labels deal exclusively in genre films, some focus on “the classics,” some don’t have a direction at all—but they all provide a high-quality product that doesn’t exist on any of the major streaming platforms, and that is luring in even the casual collector.
I remember the first DVDs extras where items such as "interactive menu" which always bugged me because surely a non interactive menu is just a picture of some buttons?
Anyway, the extras got better and better over the years and the quality on some titles has been astounding.
The Frighteners has a 4½ hour "making of" for example. The Alien Quadrilogy and Blade Runner are two more examples of amazing DVD extras as well.
Sadly, it seems to be just the boutique labels putting in the work these days. It's frustrating when studio releases list several intriguing sounding extras and then it turns out they only last five minutes each.
No bonus content? No buy