The home-video company Criterion announced Thursday that Pixar Animation Studios’ feature WALL-E will join the Criterion Collection in November, as the first Disney or Pixar movie to receive a Criterion release. The Criterion edition will be released Nov. 22, with pre-orders opening Oct. 18.
Criterion, a curation company that preserves, restores, and releases movies of particular cultural impact and importance from around the world, has almost no animated movies in its roster. WALL-E will join Watership Down, the French sci-fi film Fantastic Planet, and Wes Anderson’s stop-motion movie Fantastic Mr. Fox in the company’s limited animation lineup.In addition to being the company’s first Disney or Pixar film, WALL-E is the only CG animated film currently in the company’s library.
WALL-E was a historic film for Pixar. The story of a small trash-compacting robot left behind on a polluted, abandoned Earth was widely hailed upon its 2008 release for its unusual artfulness and confidence, with director Andrew Stanton (also the director ofFinding Nemo and Finding Dory, and a writer on all four Toy Story movies) and his co-writer Jim Reardon opening the story with 40 nearly dialogue-free minutes, and taking time throughout the increasingly fast-paced story for lyrical visual moments, like a zero-gravity robot dance in space.
As usual for Criterion, the company plans to release the movie with a variety of extras, including new commentary tracks, essays, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and more. A complete list of features follows, courtesy of Criterion:
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Andrew Stanton