Bottoms, Emma Seligman’s high school comedy already destined to become a cult classic, has just landed on Amazon Prime Video. But a physical release remains up in the air.
Fans of Emma Seligman, Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri rejoice – last year’s brilliant high school comedy, Bottoms, has just landed on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
Fans of physical media, though? Stop your rejoicing. Because while the film, distributed by MGM, is now available to stream for free with a Prime membership, that’s the only place you’ll find it for now unless you can track down the shady looking man who used to sell discs down the pub (we haven’t seen him since 2006, but that’s a story for another time).
Hot off the success of indie hit Shiva Baby, Seligman and Sennott reunited with a slightly larger budget for their step-up into the big(ish) studio leagues. Sounds like Bottoms was a real struggle to get made, as well – thanks to the LGBTQ-positive subject matter, the team struggled to find a New Orleans High School that would let them shoot the movie, with Seligman resorting primarily to using an abandoned elementary school and a college gymnasium instead (just in case you were wondering how things are going in America right now).
After all that effort, though, the film itself is a real triumph, and one of the most criminally overlooked comedies of last year. After making a reported $13.6m off of a $11.3m budget, it’s hard to argue Bottoms was a huge hit in cinemas – but this is exactly the kind of quirky high school comedy that once upon a time would have made gangbusters in the DVD market.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’ll be entering that market anytime soon. Though it is at least available to buy and rent digitally in the US, in the UK Bottoms is currently only available with a subscription to Jeff Bezos’ Wonderous Emporium Of Plumbing Fixtures. Neither territory has released the film on any kind of physical media.
In the UK, this follows the same distribution model as Ben Affleck’s Air, also distributed by MGM, which remains a Prime Video exclusive almost nine months after its cinema release. With Amazon completing its takeover of the legendary studio in 2022, this lack of support for physical media feels very similar to that of Disney – which has historically been prioritizing film releases on its Disney Plus platform over physical releases.
But without dwelling too much on the bad news – at least we can now watch Bottoms from the comfort of our homes (stop sniggering at the back). Hopefully it’ll get a physical release further down the line, but for now, the absence of low-mid budget movies from that market is a pretty depressing trend.
