William Friedkin's "Sorcerer" — a film that fell victim to shifting tastes when it opened more than three decades ago — will be remastered and released in theaters and for the first time on Blu-ray, the director told TheWrap, the entertainment news agency reported.
The film, a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear," nearly sank Friedkin's career when it hit theaters in 1977. He was riding high on the success of "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection," but as he recounts in his upcoming memoir "The Friedkin Connection," the release of "Star Wars" that same year made it a film out of time and place.
The director told TheWrap that a "major studio" has gotten involved in creating a new recolored, digital print and that he hopes it will be ready in time for the Venice Film Festival this August. He said he will have a formal announcement within roughly a week and that the re-release will include all media.
The film cost the then enormous sum of $22 million to produce but grossed $12 million and failed to make back its production budget. Along with "Heaven's Gate" and "One From the Heart," it is sometimes brought up as an example of the directorial hubris that ended the period of personal and challenging filmmaking that characterized 1970s Hollywood.
Yet the picture and, in particular a bravura sequence of a truck carrying "sweating" nitroglycerin while crossing a rickety wooden bridge, has grown in the estimation of critics. Stephen King went so far as to write in an Entertainment Weekly column that "Sorcerer" was superior to "Wages of Fear."
A 35 MM print of the film will be shown at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 2 as part of a retrospective of Friedkin's work.
