Criterion's Complete Kubrick 4K Box Set: Everything You Get for $480 (and Whether It's Worth It)

Thirty discs, thirteen features, three shorts and a list price of $599.95. Criterion's The Complete Kubrick streets Tuesday, October 20, and the real price is $479.96 at criterion.com. That is $36.92 a feature. Amazon has it at $419.99 as of Monday afternoon, which drops the math to $32.31 a feature (Amazon listing).

Everything is here, from Killer's Kiss in 1955 to Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. Criterion's listing says all sixteen titles are restored in 4K and presented in Dolby Vision HDR, with the original mono PCM tracks sitting next to 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio remixes. The Shining comes in Kubrick's international version. Vivian Kubrick's Making The Shining gets a new 4K restoration, and Lee Unkrich (who edited the book Stanley Kubrick's The Shining) and Michael Benson (Space Odyssey) record new commentaries. Jonathan Lethem talks authorship with film historian Kevin Wynter, and Nathaniel Rich wrote the essay.

The extras run past twenty-five hours. You get unseen Lolita screen tests with James Mason and Sue Lyon, rare Full Metal Jacket behind-the-scenes footage, and four documentaries: Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001), Kubrick by Kubrick (2020), Staircases to Nowhere (2013, expanded for 2026) and Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (2008). Sister Hyde Design built the packaging around Kubrick's own archive boxes.

Now the part I can't give you. Nobody has reviewed these discs. As of Monday afternoon there is no independent verdict on any of the sixteen transfers, and every spec above comes from Criterion's own page. The closest evidence is Aaron Wallace at High Def Digest, who called Criterion's standalone Barry Lyndon 4K a Must-Own in July 2025 and wrote that Criterion "takes a beautiful film and makes it the best it's ever looked on home video." Collectors assume the box shares that master. Nobody has confirmed it. The blu-ray.com pre-order thread passed 215 pages and has no disc verdicts either.

So who buys now? If you own little or no Kubrick on 4K, this is an easy yes, because one box covers the whole run and Arrow charges $49.99 list for a single limited edition. If you already own the standalone 4Ks, you are paying mostly for the extras and the packaging until someone shows the new restorations beat what is on your shelf. That makes it a completist's box. Whether Criterion will ever sell the early films separately is unknown, and they have not said. Brother Belial's pre-order carries a flat $6 shipping charge with no free tier (Brother Belial), so Amazon's free shipping over $35 matters on a box this size.

Reviews usually trail a Tuesday street date by a few days. High Def Digest and Why So Blu are the two I check first, and the newsletter is where the picture verdict will land once either one publishes.

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