LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic "Blade Runner," one of the first movies to appear on DVD in 1997, is being restored and remastered for a brief reissue in September.
The DVD, featuring the 1992 "director's cut," will be deleted after four months, and replaced by a 25th-anniversary "final cut," which Warner Home Video is billing as Scott's "definitive new version" of the film. (Warner Home Video is a unit of Time Warner, as is CNN.)
After a limited theatrical release, the newly spruced-up "Runner" will be released in a multidisc special edition DVD that also will include the original theatrical cut, the expanded international theatrical cut and the 1992 director's cut.
Warner said specifics about the two DVD editions will be announced later.
The director's cut first came out on DVD before optimal formatting standards had been established, said Doug Pratt, editor of the DVD-LaserDisc Newsletter.
"Shortly afterwards, it went into moratorium. The early adopters who bought the title have long since wished to see it upgraded, while other fans, who came into DVDs later on, have been unable to find it at all. It is the only 'big' sci-fi spectacle currently unavailable on DVD," Pratt said.
"Runner" stars Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos and Daryl Hannah and won plaudits -- as well as two Oscar nominations -- for its dark, bleak vision of the future. Ford heads the cast as Rick Deckard, a futuristic cop -- the film is set in 2019 Los Angeles -- who needs to kill four errant human clones who hijack a spaceship back to Earth after escaping from exile in an off-world colony.
The film opened in theaters in summer 1982, and while it grossed only $26.2 million, it quickly became a cult classic. The film is based on the novel by late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, whose prose also led to such films as "Total Recall," "Minority Report" and "Paycheck."
