Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Preps Home Again (Dec. 12) And Victoria And Abdul (Dec. 19) For Home Entertainment Release

Open Road Films and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment will be joining forces on Dec. 12 for the release of both DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack offerings of child actress-turned-writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s Home Again, starring Reese Witherspoon as a separated single mom who ends up with three twenty-something filmmakers moving in with her and her two young daughters. 

The ARR works out to 95 days and box office receipts for this post-Labor Day theatrical release came in at $26.9 million.

Producer and filmmaker Nancy Meyers (The Intern, What Women Want, Father of the Bride, etc.) guides her daughter’s debut as both a screenwriter and director with this interesting story about a SoCal mom of two, from a prominent Hollywood family (Candice Bergen plays Witherspoon’s mother, a former actress), who is separated from her husband (Michael Sheen) and ends up mentoring three young men with filmmaking aspirations of their own.  

Perhaps there are some parallels here with Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s own experiences growing in a “Hollywood” family — her father is writer/producer Charles Shyer (Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer shared the Oscar-nomination for the Private Benjamin script starring Goldie Hawn back in 1980) — which makes the May/September romance between Alice (Witherspoon’s character) and one of the young filmmakers, Harry (Pico Alexander — A Most Violent Year, War Machine), much more interesting than just an end-of-summer romantic comedy starring an A-list actress.

As to bonus goodies, writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer and producer Nancy Meyers provide commentary.

In other release news from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment this past week, look for director Stephen Frears’ biopic, Victoria & Abdul, to make its domestic DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack debut on Dec. 19.

The ARR is 88 days and box office receipts currently stand at $14.8 million.

The special relationship that developed between Queen Victoria (played by Judi Dench) during her final years and Indian servant Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal — Furious 7, 3 Idiots, Always Kabhi Kabhi) is the focus of this film adaptation of India-born journalist Shrabani Basu’s book, “Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Confidant.”

This bit of “lost history” was discovered by Basu while researching a book that she was writing on the history of curry in 2003 — “Curry: The Story of the Nation's Favourite Dish” — and discovered during her research the fascinating relationship that developed between Karim, known to Victoria as “Munshi,” during the final 15 years of her life.   Upon her death, her son, King Edward VII, ordered all of the letters between Victoria and Munshi burned and banished him back to India … to be forgotten.

Bonus nuggets include a pair of production featurettes — “Judi & Ali” and “The Look of Victoria & Abdul.”