This week, Kino Lorber is releasing David Lynch‘s Lost Highway on Blu-ray, but Lynch himself took to Twitter over the weekend to let his fans know that the disc doesn’t feature a restoration. Lynch tweeted, “Dear Twitter Friends, A Blu-ray of Lost Highway will be released very soon. It was made from old elements and NOT from a restoration of the original negative.”
“I hope that a version from the restoration of the original negative will happen as soon as possible,” he added, suggesting that the original negative has perhaps been restored.
Kino Lorber’s side of the story, however, is that they *tried* to get Lynch’s approval for a restoration. In a statement issued in the wake of Lynch’s tweet, the company had this to say:
“We reached out to Mr. Lynch via email to oversee and color grade a new 4K transfer (from the original camera negative) and get his approval on the dozen or so extras we had planned to include. Once we knew he was not interested in working with us, we had no choice, but to go ahead with the current Universal master and the few extras we had already produced and acquired. To our surprise, the master in question was a very good one, so we were happy to release it with some extras. We found out later that the extras and packaging also had to be approved by him (not the norm) and we sent email after email without one response. We delayed the release by a month, hoping we could at least get him to approve the trailer, the essay and our packaging, at this point we knew the interview and commentary were not possible, but after a few more weeks, we dropped the essay, the trailer and changed our front art to the previously approved DVD art. The BD only includes the film on a dual-layered BD50 disc, maxing out the feature at 30mbps with 5.1 surround and 2.0 lossless audio. We were planning to take the high road and not play the blame game, but after his tweet this weekend, we felt like we had to respond. We’re still huge David Lynch fans and are proud to release one of his masterpieces on Blu-ray.”
It sounds like Lynch wants his fans to hold out and wait for the restoration, though it’s worth noting that we have no idea if such a release is actually in the works at this time.
(So, ya know, maybe grab Kino’s Blu-ray for now!)
