Even with the stacked lineup at this year’s New York Film Festival (I mean, who isn’t excited about “The Irishman?”), one of the most highly-anticipated screenings is “The Cotton Club Encore.” The restoration/re-edit of the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film is one of the highlights of this year’s NYFF, but thanks to Lionsgate, even if you don’t attend the event, you’ll still get a chance to see what the director calls the “best version” of his period drama.
It has been revealed that Lionsgate is set to distribute “The Cotton Club Encore” in select theaters a week after the film’s premiere in New York next month. In addition, if you’re someone that isn’t lucky enough to have a theater that will show the restored, new cut of “The Cotton Club,” the film will also be making its way to Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital, just in time for the holidays.
“The Cotton Club Encore” is an extended cut of the 1984 film that tells the story of the title club. The crime drama is set in 1930s Harlem and follows the lives of the gangsters and performers that showed up at the legendary hotspot.
According to a Deadline interview, it’s revealed that Coppola spent about half a million dollars of his own money to restore the additional footage that has been added to the new cut.
“To my horror, the 25-30 minutes that was taken out, no one knew where the negative was,” explained the director. “It didn’t exist anymore. We searched and searched and finally found a good enough print. If you have a good print you can copy a good print and then, with a lot of expensive CG, you could bring it up.”
He added, “The ‘Apocalypse Final Cut’ version and this version of ‘The Cotton Club’ are the best versions of those movies and there’s logic to why. I’m older and I’m less frightened and I’m less easily bullied. What have I got to lose?”
The 1984 film stars Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Gregory Hines, Bob Hoskins, Laurence Fishburne, and Nicolas Cage.
As mentioned, “The Cotton Club Encore” will premiere at this year’s NYFF on October 5, before being released in select theaters on October 11, with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital coming later on December 10.