But not if creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky have anything to say about it. This is per a recent conversation the series showrunners had with Deadline, in which they revealed that they’ve been pushing hard for the show to get the DVD box set treatment, so that it can’t just vanish into the streaming abyss. “It’s such an important time for people to invest in physical media,” Aniello said. “Things are coming down all the time and it’s like, ‘Oh, I love that movie, I want to see it.’ You just can’t, babe, it doesn’t exist.” Aniello and her co-creators have a plan, though: “We’re really hoping to make a Hacks DVD box set, for one. We’re trying to make that happen… Please go buy it, not because we make any money off of it. We just want to make sure the show stays in existence for as long as DVD players exist.”
It’s not unknown for shows that originate on streaming to eventually get physical releases: Netflix put most of its early original successes like Orange Is The New Black and House Of Cards out on DVD, Disney has granted releases to big franchise performers like WandaVision and The Mandalorian, and Warner Bros. tossed the first season of Peacemaker on to home video. But it’s treated as a rare boon usually reserved for only the highest of performers, and while Hacks has been a critical darling (with nine Emmy wins and counting) it’s not necessarily viewed as the kind of juggernaut that moves a lot of polycarbonate.
But Aniello and her fellow creators are passionate about this one, especially in light of the show’s themes and the general messiness of “ownership” in modern digital media. Saying she hopes to give fans of the series a package packed with extras, Aniello reflected that the current state of things “Does really put so much power of the distribution of art in the hands of algorithms and people’s whims and certain executives not liking somebody’s brother, so they take down their movie or show or whatever. It is really scary, the idea of censorship, especially as more and more companies are bought up by other companies.” (Warner Bros. is, of course, in the process of being guzzled down by Paramount.) “As we’re talking about all these things, it has become only bleaker. So, I don’t know where that leaves us. Power of community, I guess?”
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