TASCHEN’s description of the limited edition of “Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining” promises that readers will be able to “witness Kubrick’s endless rounds of script rewrites, his revolutionary use of the Steadicam, the mechanics behind the infamous blood elevator, the mysterious mid-filming fire at Elstree Studios, and the countless takes needed to satisfy the meticulous force that was Kubrick.”
Sounds great! But is it worth an entire month’s rent in an expensive city? The book’s editor, Lee Unkrich, who as part of the senior creative team at Pixar has done everything from directing “Coco” to editing “Toy Story” to providing voices for “A Bug’s Life,” reassured “Shining”-heads on Reddit that this wouldn’t be their only chance to get their hands on this unprecedented trove of new material. “Sorry about the initial price tag,” he wrote on the r/StanleyKubrick sub, promising that “there will be a much more affordable edition in the future.” He went on to explain that TASCHEN strategically markets these deluxe editions before a more accessible mass market release to “help pay for the deep amount of research and cost that goes into creating a project like this.”
It’s anyone’s guess what the next iteration of the book will and won’t include from this deluxe edition, or how much it will cost. Taking a look at TASCHEN’s vault of Kubrick releases over the years, however, gives a good idea. They’ve released “making of” coffee table books on “Barry Lyndon,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and “A Clockwork Orange” at $40 a piece — this deluxe box set could easily be reformatted into the same style and sold at the same price point. Hey, at least it doesn’t register the same sticker shock as their $3,500 limited run book on Kubrick’s unmade epic “Napoleon.”