Wes Anderson’s third feature, The Royal Tenenbaums, was the film that really put him on the map.

Released back in 2001, the film earned Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay (which Julian Fellowes went on to win for Gosford Park), with Gene Hackman winning a Golden Globe for his performance as the family patriarch, Royal Tenenbaum.

The Criterion Collection, who have previously released the film in the States in a 2-disc special edition including a commentary with Anderson, will be releasing the film on Blu-ray in North America for the first time this summer.

Starring Hackman as the lead, the film features one of the best ensembles of the 21st Century, with Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, and Danny Glover, with the great Alec Baldwin narrating – you really couldn’t ask for much more back in 2001.

Anderson has of course gone on to direct The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and this year’s Cannes’ opener, Moonrise Kingdom, which became the live action film with highest per-theatre-average in its opening weekend at the end of last month, and certainly has the potential for an awards campaign later this year.

The Criterion Collection have already released on Blu-ray Anderson’s first two films, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, along with The Darjeeling Limited, and here’s to hoping that they’ll be restoring The Life Aquatic sometime in the future too, to complete the set.

Here in the UK, we sadly haven’t had any of these releases on Blu-ray reach our shores. But if, like me, your Blu-ray player happens to multi-region and capable of playing US imports, then you can head over to Amazon.com here and pre-order it for its 14th August release this summer – I can’t wait to see what it looks like on Blu-ray.

Here’s what will be included in the new release:

“Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Wes Anderson
Audio commentary by Anderson
With the Filmmaker: Portraits by Albert Maysles, featuring Anderson
Interviews with and behind-the-scenes footage of the actors
The Peter Bradley Show, featuring interviews with additional cast members
Scrapbook featuring young Richie?s murals and paintings and more
Studio 360 radio segment on painter Miguel Calderon
Trailers
Insert with Eric Anderson’s drawings of the Tenenbaum house
PLUS: An essay by film critic Kent Jones”

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJBqsVFx84M’]

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Since graduating, I spend as much time as possible watching films/TV shows, reading books, and listening to music. So getting to write about what I love is nothing short of awesome. Biggest film-related hope for 2014/ever: Guy Ritchie announcing the RocknRolla sequel is finally moving forward.