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.
No bonus content? No buy