For the week of October 4th, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will release Malcolm D Lee's Space Jam: A New Legacy on Blu-ray and 4K UHD. The sequel to 1996's smash hit Space Jam features LeBron James as the basketball star who must lead the Looney Tunes characters to victory in a game against a rogue artificial intelligence. Despite negative reviews and criticism for the amount of product placement in the film, it still managed to top the box office on its opening weekend in July 2021, grossing over $70 million domestically and over $158 million worldwide. Warner's discs will feature a Dolby Atmos audio track, while the 4K UHD disc will also have HDR picture. Additionally, a Best Buy Exclusive 4K UHD SteelBook edition and a Target Exclusive Blu-ray edition will also be available.
Also coming this week from Warner is The Nevers: Season 1, Part 1. The two-disc set will feature six episodes, as well as several featurettes as extras.
Finally from Warner this week, there are two more titles coming into the Warner Archive Collection. First is Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 3, which features another 20 theatrical shorts from the renowned animator, then comes Ron Howard's film Night Shift (1982).
New this week from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is Adam Robitel's thriller Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, starring Logan Miller, Taylor Russell, Anton David Jeftha, Deborah Ann Woll, and Holland Roden. Studio description: ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS is the sequel to the box-office hit psychological thriller that terrified audiences around the world. In this installment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive…and discovering they've all played the game before.
Sony's Blu-ray for Escape Room: Tournament of Champions contains both the theatrical and extended cuts of the film, as well as featurettes.
New this week from Paramount is a Blu-ray for Josh Boone's made-for-TV drama The Stand (2020-2021), starring James Marsden, Odessa Young, Owen Teague, Alexander Skarsgård, and Whoopi Goldberg. Synopsis: When a killer plague wipes out 99% of the world's population, the embattled survivors struggle to make their way in a post-apocalyptic reality. This 2020 adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand frames the eternal battle between good and evil, as embodied by the peaceful prophet Mother Abagail (Academy Award winner Whoopi Goldberg) and the menacing presence Randall Flagg (Emmy Award winner Alexander Skarsgård), and closes with a new coda written by Stephen King himself.
Paramount's Blu-ray for The Stand (2020-2021) contains a gag reel and the featurette An Apocalyptic Epic: Adapting The Stand as extras. Note that on the same day, Paramount will release The Stand: The Definitive 2-Series Collection, which bundles both the new miniseries and the the original 1994 miniseries.
However, most would say that the biggest releases of the week are coming from Shout Factory, whose Scream Factory imprint is upgrading not one, not two, but five of the Halloween films to 4K UHD: Halloween (1978), Halloween II (1981), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989). All five films have new 4K scans from their original camera negatives and Dolby Atmos audio options, with the first three films supervised by cinematographer Dean Cundey. Additionally, all five films have newly-authored Blu-rays taken from the new masters. Each title comes packaged as a Collector's Edition, with commentaries, featurettes and more spread across all five films. Finally, each film comes packaged with a slipbox case.
Last, but certainly not least this week, the first of the Universal Classic Monsters series comes to 4K UHD in the Universal Classic Monsters Icons of Horror Collection, which will contain Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Wolf Man (1941). Blu-rays for all four films will be included as well, with hours of archival extras, including the Spanish language version of Dracula. The eight-disc set will be housed in collectible "book" packaging. Note that Best Buy will have Exclusive 4K UHD SteelBook editions for Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man, as well.