Ridley Scott’s 1979 space horror “Alien” and 1982 sci-fi noir “Blade Runner” have both made the lead to 4K UHD disc, but it looks like his 1985 fantasy feature “Legend” will not.
Like various Scott films, “Legend” exists in three forms – the 89-minute American theatrical version (with a score by Tangerine Dream), the 93-minute international version, and the 114-minute director’s cut – the latter two with a score by Jerry Goldsmith.
A limited-edition Blu-ray of the film is coming from Arrow Films in September, and producer James Flower revealed on Twitter (via The Digital Bits) recently that an Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray release is not possible from both a technical and legal standpoint.
First up, the more well-regarded Director’s Cut was restored from one of only two surviving 35mm answer prints as there is no surviving negative. A scan from such a print to 4K would result in “less-than-optimal picture quality” with Flower adding that they contain unfinished effects and issues that need to be corrected all over again in 4K after having spent a lot of money fixing them for the 2011 HD release. He adds: “its imperfections would be utterly naked in 4K, and the diminished dynamic range would make HDR a moot point.”
To get a good 4K scan would require the negatives and those that do exist are for the international cut. Rights here are complicated as Universal owns the negative, but Fox/Disney own distribution rights to that particular version of the film.
They did a 4K scan of the negative anyway in the hope they might be able to pull off a miracle and clear a US/UK edition with all three cuts. After trying “very, very hard” with Fox to get clearance, they had no luck.
Nor could they use the 4K scans they had to re-assemble the Director’s Cut as, despite the only 20 minutes or so final runtime difference, the films only share less than an hour of the same footage. The result would be “compromised, Frankenstein masters that would inevitably fall short of people’s high expectations, no matter what we did.”
What we’re getting in September is a regular Blu-ray with “both Director’s and US cuts in the best quality they’ve ever been seen in. It’s still a stonking upgrade, thanks in no small part to those neg scans of the one cut that’s unfortunately missing.”
