Like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now is a film that exists in many versions – you have the original release, the 2001 re-edited Redux that runs an entire hour longer, and the five-hour unofficial bootlegged workprint. And now, like Blade Runner, it’s getting a Final Cut, courtesy of Coppola himself.
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is due to screen at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on 28 April, marking the 40th anniversary of the film’s original release. The Tribeca site describes the cut as “a new, never-before-seen restored version of the film, entitled Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, remastered from the original negative in 4K Ultra HD”. Following the screening, Coppola will be interviewed by Steven Soderbergh on stage “to discuss the huge undertaking of restoring Apocalypse Now: Final Cut and why the time was right for Coppola to do this now, forty years after the original version and eighteen years after Apocalypse Now Redux.”
Will it be shorter than Redux? Will it add extra stuff from the workprint? Did Coppola go all Colonel Kurtz again trawling back through the reams of footage from the film’s famously tumultuous production? We’ll find out by the end of the month – and while a wider release for the Final Cut isn’t yet confirmed, the 40th anniversary connection means we should hopefully see the latest version of his Heart Of Darkness-inspired war movie at some point this year.
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