In news that Tony Scott would have loved and Quentin Tarantino might hate, the movie they made together, 1993’s True Romance, is set to receive a 4K digital restoration. Via NME, the new version will be available on Blu-ray on July 19th.
Starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, True Romance follows an Elvis fanatic and a call girl after they fall in love, get married, and accidentally steal a fortune’s worth of cocaine. Scott directed from a script by Tarantino, and while it was regarded as a box office disappointment at the time, it has gone on to acquire a devoted following.
The 4K restoration includes both the theatrical and director’s cut of the film, alongside commentary from Tarantino and Scott, as well as Slater and Arquette. Those discs come packaged with a double-sided poster, six postcards, and a 60-page booklet of essays regarding the film, as well as a eulogy for Tony Scott written by Edgar Wright.
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You can check out the slick new 4K trailer below.
Before his death in 2012, Scott was a crowd-pleasing, forward-looking director, quick to adapt to new technologies and happy to shoot television commercials for fun and profit. Digital restorations such as this one likely would have appealed to him. But Tarantino is a lovable crank, slavishly devoted to film stock above all else. In 2014, he said watching a 4K print of Fistful of Dollars made him “depressed.” His stance seems to be slightly softer for home viewing, but you can be certain he won’t show any 4K restorations at his newly-purchased Vista Theatre in Los Angeles. In fact, he said, “We’ll show new movies that come out where they give us a film print.”
In other news, Tarantino recently published a novelization of his ninth film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In June, the 58-year-old doubled-down on his plan to retire after the 10th, saying, “I know film history, and from here on end, directors do not get better.”
