Filmmaker Michael Mann‘s adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, Manhunter, turns 40 this year. To celebrate, StudioCanal is unleashing a brand new 4K restoration in theaters next month.

Manhunter: The Final Cut will open in select US theaters on July 24, following its debut at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ David Geffen Theater this Friday, June 12.

The film will also release theatrically in the UK on September 25 and on home entertainment later this year.

In Manhunter, “FBI criminal profiler Will Graham (William L. Petersen) is called out of early retirement to assist on a serial murder case involving a killer known as the “Tooth Fairy” (Tom Noonan). Graham enlists the help of imprisoned serial killer — and cannibal — Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox), who is the reason Graham took an early retirement. Soon, Graham and the FBI are entangled in a deadly cat-and-mouse game between the Tooth Fairy, Lecter, and an interfering journalist (Stephen Lang).“

It marks the first on-screen appearance of the cannibalistic killer that Anthony Hopkins would later popularize in The Silence of the Lambs, though Brian Cox’s iteration has even less screentime.

It’s the talents of the late Tom Noonan as the unsettling Francis Dollarhyde that makes this serial killer thriller so creepy.

This new 4K Final Cut, overseen by Mann, “enhances the film’s depth, visual clarity and sound, offering audiences the ultimate immersive version,” per the press release. 

“40 years ago – though armed with Thomas Harris’ excellent novel, Red Dragon – its subject matter, the profiling of serial killers, as well as being shocking and raw, was unknown. When adapting, I wanted to make its storytelling deliver audiences into a certain state of threat and emotional engagement. Integral to that was the visualization and use of music with lyrics, sometimes working like a libretto. We have carefully remastered the film to try to evoke that mood and intensity, heightened with audio sourced from the original 5.1 35mm analog masters. This latest iteration is that version of the film with which I’m most satisfied,” said writer-director Michael Mann.

Mann guided this 4K scan of the original 35mm negative, with a few shots from an interpositive , that was conformed and digitally restored at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna. Both the theatrical version and the UHD HDR & SDR video color gradings were performed by Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 in Los Angeles with the director. Sound restoration was done at Audio Mechanics from an original 35mm magnetic 6-track printmaster to release a new 5.1 mix by Luke Schwartzweller at Fox. Technical coordination and deliveries were managed by L’Immagine Ritrovata. This project was supervised by Becca Mann and the StudioCanal team, Jean-Pierre Boiget, and Delphine Roussel.

For Michael Mann, the process is about renewing the film’s immediacy for contemporary audiences: “If the picture was left the way it was, it would be interesting, but you’d feel some distance …you’d be observing it somewhat. I’m more interested in its original intent impacting you the same way it may have in 1986…that is, to bring you into it again in the original way.”