Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. If anybody on God's green earth should be excited that Jaws is coming back to movie theaters this summer it should be me. I've been calling for Universal to nut up and really put this back in theaters, especially since they did that incredible restoration.
As many of you know, Jaws celebrates its 40th Birthday next month and we will be seeing it back on the big screen, but it's going to be via Fathom Events. Fathom is notorious for advertising big screen returns of classic movies and then only sending a DVD (not even Blu-Ray) that the theaters tend to play on their advertising projectors, not even the heavy duty digital bad boys.
Then they wonder why nobody shows up.
I don't know if Fathom has upped their game since their awful roll out of films like Ghostbusters and Poltergeist, but I sure hope so. It's easier than ever to get DCPs in theater's hands and the 4k restoration of Jaws is immaculate. I've seen it three times on screens, from New Zealand to France and back here in the States and it's the best I've ever seen the film look.
In an ideal world Universal would put real money and make this a legit release, with a big marketing push and make it the event it should be, but I don't think that's likely in this day and age. One of the big things revealed by the Sony hack was just how little the studios care about their library stuff and how easily they dismiss ideas of re-releases of any sort.
With digital technology so prevalent it'd be easier and cheaper than ever for studios and theaters to team up to do official re-releases. I remember growing up I'd see Disney's stuff, like Cinderella and even Song of the South, so it wasn't all that long ago when that was the norm. Now it seems that the studio has to 3D-ify a movie to make it an actual re-release, but they've even stopped doing that.
I don't know what the answer is, I just know that I'd love it if watching "older movies" in theaters was the norm and not the exception. Luckily, we have theaters like the Drafthouse and Cinefamily and New Bev carrying that torch, but it'd be nice if everyone across the country could get similar cinephile love.
Anyway, I'll keep my ears open on what Fathom's event is going to entail. Tickets go on sale tomorrow and the screenings will happen between June 21st and June 24th across the country. I'd love it if Fathom got their shit together while I wasn't looking and they do this for real.
I'm working on my own little 40th Anniversary article, which should post on or near the actual anniversary of release, June 20th. Stay tuned!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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