Blu-ray, DVD Release: Boardwalk Empire: Season 1

Release Date: Jan. 10, 2012
Price: DVD $59.99, Blu-ray $79.98
Studio: HBO Home Entertainment/Warner Home Video


Boardwalk Empire scene

Steve Buscemi makes one thing perfectly clear in Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season.

HBO Home Entertainment’s period drama Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season boasts some serious credentials, led by the television series’ eight Emmy Awards, including one for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series (Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver), and a pair  of 2011 Golden Globes for Best Drama Series and Best Actor (Steve Buscemi, The Big Lebowski).

Aired on HBO in 2010, the TV show re-creates the glitter and decadence of 1920’s Atlantic City at a time when Prohibition proved to be a major catalyst in the rise of organized crime in America. Full of corruption, backroom politics, vicious power struggles and a fierce hunger for wealth, the show turns on Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (Buscemi), Atlantic City’s treasurer. He’s also the town’s undisputed ruler — a political fixer and backroom dealer who’s equal parts politician and criminal and equally comfortable in either role. Violence, competition, romantic entanglements be damned, Nucky takes full advantage of all the possibilities his position makes available.

Executive produced (and occasionally directed) by Scorsese, Terence Winter, Tim Van Patten, Stephen Levinson and Mark Wahlberg, the 12 episodes of the series’ first season co-stars such talents as Michael Shannon (The Runaways), Michael Pitt (The Dreamers), Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting), Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man) and Paz de la Huerta (Enter the Void).

The Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season Blu-ray and DVD include the following bonus features:

  • Enhanced Viewing (BD only) – interactive, picture-in-picture experience on all 12 episodes with information about the production process from the cast and crew and the real-life history that inspired the show from noted Atlantic City historians
  • Making Boardwalk Empire – behind-the-scenes look featuring interviews from the cast and crew
  • Character Dossier – evolving character guide with the development of the major players
  • Creating the Boardwalk – featurette on how the 300-foot Boardwalk set was created to bring Prohibition-era Atlantic City to life.
  • Atlantic City: The Original Sin City – 30-minute documentary about the culture and climate of Atlantic City during the roaring 1920s
  • Speakeasy Tour – insider’s tour of some of the famed Prohibition speakeasies in Chicago and New York with cast members from the series
  • six audio commentaries including actors Steve Buscemi, Michael Kenneth Williams and Michael Shannon, creator/writer/executive producer Terence Winter, director/writer/executive producer Tim Van Patten, writer/supervising producer Howard Korder and directors Brian Kirk and Allen Coulter.
Buy or Rent Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season
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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.