Restoring the African Queen

Next Tuesday, March 23rd, for the first time ever on DVD and on Blu-ray, Paramount is releasing 1951′s The African Queen. The MovieWeb scored an exclusive video, perhaps a deleted extra from the upcoming release on the tedious restoration process the film needed for its first ever digital and high-def release.Early word has it as “one of the industry’s best”.

Ron Smith, VP Restoration at Paramount Studios describes the film and why it has never been released before: “There was never a good enough print to make a DVD. [This new version] will be a terrific treat for anybody that gets to see this.”

Blu-ray.com had a neat reason why it took this long. “The restoration was delayed for several years before the studio could have access to the original camera negative, which was stored in the United Kingdom. Rather than risk damaging or losing the negative in transit, Smith’s team decided to have it scanned at 4K resolution by UK-based company Cinesite. The digital files were then sent by secure server to Warner Bros’ Motion Picture Imaging (MPI) in Burbank to be restored and recombined.”

Before you run out to buy this classic film on Blu-ray (preferably) or DVD, check out this little extra we’ve embedded below.