The Royal Hunt of the Sun on Blu-ray? (1 Viewer)

Does anyone know if there will ever be a release (DVD, Blu-ray) of the restored, complete (118 min?) version of "The Royal Hunt of the Sun", the Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw film of 1969? Thanks.

P.S. I can't find anyway to correct the spelling of the film's title. I love this site but I hate trying to navigate it!

I'd sure be interested in this one. Really hope that it sees a proper release and, hopefully, in blu-ray format.

sonomatom1 said:

P.S. I can't find anyway to correct the spelling of the film's title. I love this site but I hate trying to navigate it!

Click to expand...

Moderators: please do the necessary!

Cinema Center Films (currently held by CBS) distributed this in the United States and for a time held the copyright. CBS is the one in NA that probably has the best print of this film in its vaults. I'm not sure if another company overseas holds the original UK negative either.

It appears to have lapsed into public domain, but is it PD?

At any rate I seriously don't expect a blu-ray to emerge anytime soon. As it is, we haven't even got a quality DVD of this title--all of the existing transfers are crap, the home video equivalent of shovelware. And a quality DVD release is still possible given that CBS is still releasing new DVDs of its Cinema Center Films library with pristine video quality. Let's hope it's supposed PD status hasn't scared them off in a similar manner to Paramount's aversion to releasing One Eyed Jacks.

I have two DVDs of Royal Hunt of the Sun:
905 Entertainment: non-anamorphic letter-boxed, 97 minutes, very bad transfer.
Pegasus Entertainment: 1.37, PAL, display clocks in at 1 hour, 55 minutes, slightly better transfer.

Just watched the TERRIBLE "HD" streaming version on Amazon Prime, ported over from an ancient (but at least widescreen) video transfer at what looks like about 240 horizontal lines of resolution (and a slight vertical squeeze, to my eyes).

CBS did release a MOD DVD but at $20 it's too expensive to take a chance on, and I can't find any reviews. Does anyone know if it's any good at all? This movie would look gorgeous if decent elements existed for a 2K or 4K scan.