Station Eleven: Patrick Somerville’s DVD Story Has Happy Ending

It’s always nice to have a follow-up to a story that winds up with a happy ending, and it’s even nicer when we can tie it into “The Magic of the Holiday Season” (sorry, holidays are making us a bit snarky). And that’s what we have to report regarding Station Eleven showrunner Patrick Somerville (Netflix’s Maniac) and what he shared last week regarding the possibility of the HBO Max series being released in a physical copy form. Considering what’s going on over at Warner Bros. Discovery and how it’s made shows “disappear” for financial write-off reasons, it’s an understandable concern (especially after the story Somerville shares regarding how the show’s creators learned about physical copies existing). Well… guess what? It looks like the adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel‘s post-apocalyptic bestseller will be available on 4K UltraHD beginning February 21, 2023.

Here’s a look at Somerville’s tweet confirming the news, while offering a nod to fans on Twitter for helping make this happen:

Here’s a look back at the question that Somerville received via Twitter regarding fans being able to get their hands on physical copies of the series in case Warner Bros. Discovery decides to make Station Eleven disappear. Somerville’s response proved both frustrating and yet, not surprising (though shocking in a”bigger picture” context). Seriously, the creators found out third-party that DVDs of their show existed… and they had to purchase their own copies on Amazon? Somerville then shifted to a very sobering reality. We’re now living in a time when a show can have waves of love & support from critics & fans, strong, solid viewing numbers, a committed multi-season gameplan, and a green light for a new season and still get shelved for reasons that have nothing directly to do with the show whatsoever.

“I know this has come up a lot for fans of the show, and I apologize for not speaking to it. I haven’t because I myself have been catching up to the process and trying to understand. But here’s what I know:

About six weeks ago, a legitimate DVD version of the show did, in fact, become available from Viacom/Paramount, but it wasn’t something the creators or producers were informed of and def not something we had oversight over. Still, I was glad to see it existed.

There were some “deleted scenes” on there that needed a bit more curation, and Paramount helped us out and removed some things we didn’t want out there. So that was all.

Along the way, we learned they were putting the DVD out “on demand”, which essentially meant the DVDs would be made as people ordered them. So the product DOES exist, but I think the delays are a function of this (kinda disappointing) method of rolling them out.

It’s funny because all of the makers of the show were caught off guard by it appearing. I ordered 4 copies for myself off Amazon.

I wish we’d had a chance to make a cool physical version with commentaries and supplemental material, but on the other hand, I’m glad there’s some kind of path. TV world is very weird right now.

In conclusion, though— feel free to watch it on HBO Max! The only way to really ensure shows remain available is that they generate too much interest (and completion) for anyone to justify removing them.

And even then…

If you take anything from this thread, take this— even the people who make shows have no fuckin’ idea what’s gonna happen tomorrow, just like the execs who passionately fought for them for years have no idea if they’ll be employed tomorrow. That runs all the way up to the CEOs.

All you can do is make ’em and move on and hope they don’t go away while you’re in the middle of the process.”

But as you can see from the follow-up tweet above, Somerville already had a plan ready to go in case Station Eleven ended up in Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Financial Witness Protection Program,” never to be heard from or seen from ever again. It’s like “Burning Man” but with lots and lots of couches.