The Godfather hits theaters for 50th anniversary, gets 4K trilogy box set

Right here’s a suggestion few cinephiles will be capable to refuse: The Godfather, usually cited as one of many best movies of all time, will obtain a restricted theatrical launch starting Feb. 25, Paramount Photos introduced Thursday.

Programmed solely within the U.S. for Dolby Cinema at AMC Theatres (however anticipated to roll out throughout the globe in different venues), the re-release will reap the benefits of the latest 4K switch supervised by writer-director Francis Ford Coppola. All three movies have been lately restored — with Half III even re-edited to skew nearer to Coppola’s authentic imaginative and prescient — and will probably be launched in a 4K extremely HD restricted collector’s version on March 222. Variations of The Godfather and The Godfather Half II will embody each the unique mono tracks and the 5.1 audio mixes accepted by the legend Walter Murch in 2007.

“I’m very pleased with The Godfather, which actually outlined the primary third of my artistic life,” stated Francis Ford Coppola in a press release. “With this fiftieth anniversary tribute, I’m particularly proud Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Demise of Michael Corleone is included, because it captures Mario and my authentic imaginative and prescient in definitively concluding our epic trilogy. It’s additionally gratifying to have a good time this milestone with Paramount alongside the fantastic followers who’ve beloved it for many years, youthful generations who nonetheless discover it related right this moment, and those that will uncover it for the primary time.”

Starring Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, John Cazale, and plenty of others, The Godfather initially hit theaters on March 24, 1972, and was instantly embraced as a contemporary traditional. Even the persnickety New York Occasions movie critic Vincent Canby was in awe of Coppola’s sprawling first chapter, writing on the time, “‘The Godfather,’ nevertheless true or false to particular details, is as darkish and ominous a mirrored image of sure features of American life as has ever been offered in a film designed as sheer leisure. Now, as then, when the system doesn’t work, the system will probably be by‐handed.”

Coppola, now 82, continues to be round and kicking it. Final summer time, the filmmaker introduced he would make investments practically $100 million into Megalopolis, a science fiction epic he’s dreamed of constructing for practically 20 years. However would he ever return to the Corleone household for a Godfather Half IV? Whereas there could also be free ends {that a} storyteller may decide up and run with, Coppola has shot down the likelihood, principally because of working with an enormous studio like Paramount.

“For me? At my age?” he informed British GQ in 2012. “Being on an enormous, costly film that has a producer who’ll need to give me notes? They don’t manage to pay for on earth to provide me to spend a 12 months doing that.”

The unique Godfather could be all we’d like. Followers of the saga will get their likelihood to see the movie later this winter. For a better take a look at the most important anniversaries set to bow this 12 months, learn our 2022 preview.