UK distributor Second Sight Films announced earlier this year that they’re restoring George A. Romero‘s Dawn of the Dead for an upcoming 4K Ultra HD release, with the original camera negative provided by producer Richard P. Rubenstein. The scanning, color grading and restoration is being managed by Final Frame under the supervision of Director of Photography Michael Gornick, and Second Sight has provided us with a bit of an update this week.
The company writes over on Facebook…
“Following the 4K scan of the camera negative, grading and framing approved by DP Michael Gornick, we now have about 4 weeks left of manual frame by frame restoration at Final Frame followed by the HDR grade for the UHD. We are releasing the 3 cuts on 3 separate discs (both Blu-Ray and UHD) plus bonus disc so the authoring stage will then take several weeks for the best possible encodes by David Mackenzie. We are currently hoping for a release date in February and will update again in the next month.”
“Aside from the 3 versions of the film itself, plus archive and new bonus material, we are also working on other exciting additional content for the box set. We have been very fortunate to have Michael Gornick involved and it was great to hear his comment on work to date: ‘I place upon this extraordinary effort a nihil obstat in certification of its quality’. More soon…”
Yes, the set will feature George A. Romero’s Original, Unrated US Theatrical Release Cut (2:07), Romero’s Pre-US Release Cannes Cut (2:17) and the foreign edition edited by Dario Argento.
The 4K Ultra HD discs will be Region Free, with a UK Blu-ray also coming.
