MovieChat Forums > The Alamo (1960) Discussion > Why wasnt this released as an extended e...

Why wasnt this released as an extended edition bluray?


This would be awesome! there are movies even older than this that are on blue ray, why not this?

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It may not happen as Alamo was shot on problematic film stock, and the usable elements have decayed. There was an attempt to preserve and restore them, and release the film on blu-ray, but the restoring process was halted by MGM's bankcruptcy. Moreover, at some point MGM gained bad press for not funding the (extremely expensive) restoration themselves, and returned whatever contributions they had already received.

Currently, only the audio has been preserved, and the film stock keeps rotting. Judging by the discussion on Home Theater Forum, the new MGM staff hasn't shown any interest on the project, and it already might be too late to save the decent-looking elemets. The long version is in bigger danger, as it survives only on a single, damaged reel and its only backup is a fuzzy laser disc master, which looks *much* worse than the original 70mm film prints (and that's putting it mildly).

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