Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Selects Mar. 20 For The Home Entertainment Launch Of Pitch Perfect 3 And Feb. 27 For Darkest Hour

Universal Pictures can make “Bellas of Barden” movies forever — like 007/James Bond … it is the film franchise that keeps giving and giving and giving!!!

The latest, director Trish Sie’s Pitch Perfect 3, has pulled in $100.5 million in domestic multiplex ticket sales … worldwide the three films in the series have pulled in over a half-a-billion dollars on a combined production budget of under $100 million, that’s green baby, lot’s of green!!!   Expect the next comedy adventure to arrive in theatres sometime in late 2019 or early 2020.

In the meantime, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment announced this past week that Pitch Perfect 3 will be available on Mar. 20 as a three-SKU helping of home entertainment products.   Lined up for consumers to select from are a stand-alone DVD edition, a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack or a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack selection.

For the record, the ARR is a swift-to-market 88 days.

As to bonus features for this Beca (Anna Kendrick), Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) and the rest of the Bellas funfest, there are five featurettes — “Competition Crescendo,” “Don't Mess with Rebel,” “The Headliner: DJ Khaled,” “The Final Note: John and Gail” and “Just Because He's a Bad Guy” — and the music video titled “Freedom! '90 x Cups.”

Exclusive to the Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD SKUs are deleted scenes, a gag reel and extended versions of Evermoist’s “How a Heart Unbreaks,” Young Sparrow and DJ Dragon Nutz’s “You Got It” and Saddle Up’s “Ex's and Oh's.”

Plus there are four production featurettes — “A Cappella Action,” “The Women of Pitch Perfect 3,” “The Final Performance” and “Hollywood of the South” — and two new musical performances — a duet featuring Fat Amy and Fergus Casino and the The Bellas’ serve-up “See You Smile.”

 

Also added to the home entertainment release calendar this past week by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment is director Joe Wright’s Best Picture nominee, Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman in a tour de force performance as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The street date for a both DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack editions will be Feb. 27.   This late February street date (timed to take advantage of the Oscar hype — telecast is on March 4) yields an ARR of 95 days and domestic box office receipts currently stand at $40.8 (and growing).

Gary Oldman has to be the Best Actor frontrunner for the Oscar for his amazing performance here … he’s already won the SAG and Golden Globe awards in this category.   The competition is pretty weak, with Daniel Day-Lewis turning in a muddled farewell performance in Phantom Thread, Denzel Washington some how got nominated for his work in a film that no one saw, Roman J. Israel, Esq., Daniel Kaluuya is in the group for the over-rated Get Out and Timothée Chalamet rounds out the quintet for his performance in Call Me by Your Name.   

Four of the five films in the Best Actor category are also competing in the Best Picture category … Roman J. Israel, Esq. did not make the cut. 

The Oscars have turned into an absolute mess of late, with politics and political correctness run amok, so nothing is guaranteed from this sorry voting membership group that makes up the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences these days.    Moonlight over La La Land, really?   

As to bonus nuggets, director Joe Wright (Atonement, The Soloist, Pride & Prejudice, etc.) provides commentary and there are two featurettes — “Into Darkest Hour” and “Gary Oldman: Becoming Churchill.”