Amid concerns from theater owners about Black Widow’s pandemic box office success, Marvel Studios is already moving forward with the movie’s larger home release. MCU fans will be able to own digital and physical editions a little sooner than they think.
Today, Marvel announced that a digital edition of Black Widow will be available for download beginning August 10 for those who haven’t opted to stream the movie on Disney+ Premiere Access, where it’s currently accessible to subscribers for an additional $30. Black Widow’s set to become available to all Disney+ subscribers on October 6, which is likely how many more viewers will end up seeing it for the first time as the year goes on and other Disney+ content keeps people on the platform.
For those looking to buy physical copies of the film, 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD editions—including nine deleted scenes and a blooper reel—will be available September 14. It would be an understatement to call Black Widow’s various release windows a bit complicated, but they’re all reflections of how Disney, like other studios, is still adapting to pandemic-era challenges while also building out a cinematic universe tied to a new streaming service. It’s going to be very interesting to see if this particular kind of staggered but also accelerated home release schedule is going to become Marvel’s approach as it release more new films, including Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (out September 3) and Eternals (November 5). While it wasn’t Marvel’s intention for the movie, Black Widow’s ended up being a rather public example of a massive studio testing out the many distribution options at its disposal—some of which have been industry-disrupting. Of course, how audiences actually feel about going to theaters versus streaming at home and buying physical media is obviously going to factor into how this all plays out going forward.
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DISCUSSION
I saw Black Widow on opening night in a theater, and bought Premiere Access through Disney+ the following day, and I kind of regret it now. That Disney+ exclusivity window is super short, and on top of that I was seeing the best scenes of the movie uploaded to comic book movie centric YouTube channels within hours of the movie going live to Disney+.
With a $30 premium rental fee, I sort of expected Disney to limit who could rebroadcast footage of the film, but boy was I wrong.