MAXIMUM KUBRICK-A-BRAC: Criterion to Release Stanley Kubrick Box Set with All 13 of His Films, Including ‘The Shining’ International Cut.
The Criterion Collection is about to give Stanley Kubrick fans everything they’ve asked for: All 13 of the director’s features in one box set.
As the company has done with the likes of Wes Anderson and Ingmar Bergman, Criterion’s “The Complete Kubrick” brings together all the director’s movies in 4K, with the set hitting shelves on October 20, 2026. Watch a teaser for the box set below.
The films are “Day of the Fight” (1951, in both original and RKO versions); “Flying Padre” (1952); “Fear and Desire” (1952); “The Seafarers” (1953); “Killer’s Kiss” (1955); “The Killing” (1956); “Paths of Glory” (1957); “Spartacus” (1960); “Lolita” (1962); “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1962); “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968); “A Clockwork Orange” (1971); “Barry Lyndon” (1975); “The Shining” (1980, in both theatrical and international versions); “Full Metal Jacket” (1987); and “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999).
Notably, the international cut of “The Shining” is rarely available on home video or widely seen in North America; it’s shorter than the theatrical version by about 20 minutes, removing several pieces of exposition to create an even more ambiguous (as if!) suffocating atmosphere of dread.
I have a number of these films in Blu-Ray or 4K already, so I’m not sure if I’m going for this, but I might have been enticed if Criterion had managed to find the original extended cut of 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Shining, before Kubrick shorted these films not long after their original versions had been shipped to theaters. The original ending of The Shining in particular would be fun to see:
After its premiere and a week into the general run (with a running time of 146 minutes), Kubrick cut a scene at the end that took place in a hospital. The scene shows Wendy in a bed talking with Mr. Ullman, who explains that Jack’s body could not be found; he then gives Danny a yellow tennis ball, presumably the same one that Jack was throwing around the hotel. This scene was subsequently physically cut out of prints by projectionists and sent back to the studio by order of Warner Bros., the film’s distributor. This cut the film’s running time to 144 minutes. Roger Ebert commented:
If Jack did indeed freeze to death in the labyrinth, of course his body was found – and sooner rather than later, since Dick Hallorann alerted the forest rangers to serious trouble at the hotel. If Jack’s body was not found, what happened to it? Was it never there? Was it absorbed into the past and does that explain Jack’s presence in that final photograph of a group of hotel party-goers in 1921? Did Jack’s violent pursuit of his wife and child exist entirely in Wendy’s imagination, or Danny’s, or theirs? … Kubrick was wise to remove that epilogue. It pulled one rug too many out from under the story. At some level, it is necessary for us to believe the three members of the Torrance family are actually residents in the hotel during that winter, whatever happens or whatever they think happens.[44]
The general consensus among those who saw the first few shows was that the film was better without it because keeping it would weaken the Overlook’s threat to the family and reintroduce Ullman, who had barely had a leading role in the story, into the conflict.[123] Co-writer Diane Johnson revealed that Kubrick had a certain “compassion” from the beginning for the fate of Wendy and Danny, and in that sense the hospital scene would give a sense of a return to normality. Johnson, on the other hand, was in favor of a more tragic outcome: she proposed the death of Danny Torrance. For Shelley Duvall, “Kubrick was wrong, because the scene explained some important things, such as the meaning of the yellow ball and the role that the hotel manager played in the intrigue.”[123] Kubrick decided that the film worked better without the scene.[124]
Still though, for somebody who wants an immersive deep dive into one of the 20th century’s greatest film directors, many wonders (and questions) await here.
