Scream Factory has announced that they are working on a new Blu-ray release of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1997 sci-fi horror feature “Event Horizon”.
The film deals with a mission to find a lost starship in orbit of Neptune with a stellar drive that accidentally opens a gateway to dimension of pure evil. Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs, Kathleen Quinlan and Jack Noseworthy starred.
Made for a large $60 million budget at the time, it was a critical and box-office flop known for its extreme gore and production problems. The film was rushed through post-production, Anderson effectively only having four weeks to edit and complete the film.
His 130 minute rough cut was overly long and test screened to poor reaction including reports of audience members fainting. Paramount made him cut the film to just 96 minutes, including removal of some of the gore such as a longer version of the ‘blood orgy’ video of the old crew, and the end montage during Weir & Miller’s confrontation. Cut footage also included more character building scenes.
After its release, home video sales were strong and the film has since garnered a cult audience in the subsequent two decades. Many have been wanting to see what was cut out, but plans for a director’s cut were scrapped because it seemed that the extra footage that was shot was lost. In 2017 Anderson revealed that producer Lloyd Levin had a VHS copy of the movie that may still have the lost footage on it but wasn’t clear what was on it.
Hopefully there was something as this new releases promises not just a whole new scan of the film, but extras that might include some of the deleted footage:
“New extras are in progress and will be announced on a later date. We can confirm today that we are doing a new 4K scan of the film! As for any much-inquired-about additional footage (in addition to what’s be presented on prior releases), we are looking into it as best we can. We welcome any leads you may have alongside our efforts.”
Scream Factory hopes to release the Blu-ray on September 29th.
Source: San Diego Reader (via Slashfilm)
