“Hard Boiled” Cannes Poster
Hard Boiled, John Woo’s 1992 Hong Kong action masterpiece, will screen at the 2025 Festival de Cannes. The film will be presented with a New Restoration from the original 35mm camera negative.
Following its Cannes premiere, the newly restored Hard Boiled 4K will be released digitally (and physically) in North America through Shout! Studios’ new entertainment label, Hong Kong Cinema Classics™.
The seminal Hong Kong classic involves tough-as-nails cop (Chow Yun-fat), who teams up with an undercover agent (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) to shut down a sinister mobster and his crew.
More details about the restoration (via Cannes):
A Shout! Studios presentation. Restoration from the original 35mm camera negative. 4K digitization by Interface Video Production Ltd. Audio restoration of the original Cantonese theatrical mono track by Brandon Bentley. Restoration by Duplitech. Color correction by Dave Lewis, Christopher Moore and Blake David-Blasingame. Conformation by Dominic Marino and Stephen Hardy. DCP creation by Brian Bolt, Matt Hepworth and Michael Rainey. Restoration supervised by Henry Weintraub of Shout! Studios.
Watch the film’s 4K Restoration Trailer below:
Great news! I would like to see it here in the UK as well, maybe 88 Films or Eureka Entertainment would pick this up for distribution, as I have only the DVD edition from Tartan Video. Time will tell…
I own the DVD, two Blu-ray editions. Not that long ago I saw a video on youtube where it was explained why there weren’t proper high quality physical media around of Hard Boiled. It’s because some real estate broker owns the rights to Hard Boiled and other films but wasn’t willing to sell just one film, but the whole collection, which of course is a very expensive affair. Seems like either this is a different version entirely or someone was so mad enough to buy the whole collection.
On behalf of every heroic bloodshed fan in the world, I thank you people for making this happen.
Looks like Arrow Video picked up the rights for the entire GP library from Shout.
As far as I know Shout Factory bought the whole library of titles from the company, so let us see how the things will unfold.
Probably should include this trailer, as it’s the same trailer, but with the 4K restoration being shown at Cannes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgvK_qhyqgA
Thanks for the heads up, Ben!
Let’s hope the actual release is better than this fanmade trailer “4k remaster”. Looks sheetier than my DVD from 1998
Always that one guy⬆️
Always that one guy who reads the headline and never the article. If you actually clicked and watched the trailer and thought this was a 4K remaster from the film negatives…..may I suggest a visit to the opticians.
Then why are you here if the source material doesn’t suit you? All you do is complain and talk a bunch of crap in the comment section? Go find another alternative website. Wait a minute is this Yilong from the old skool kung fu threads? Lmfao
Everybody be cool! This is just a gentleman’s misunderstanding (& I don’t give out comments easily!) between 2 of our longtime patrons. In fairness, the fanmade trailer that SK refers to was definitely not 4K, so as Big Ben recommended in the comment above, we’ve now updated it to the actual 4K one. As a sidenote, I think I have the same DVD from 1998 laying around somewhere…
I have no idea who Yilong is but if he has beef with you then I think the issue isnt me but actually…you?
Talking a bunch of crap? Pointing out that a supposed 4k trailer isnt actually 4k. Right ….we live in post truth world now where facts are woke. Let me guess…..you celebrated when Orange Mussolini slapped tarriffs against the rest of the world cos paying more to import your blurays is absolutely winning
I remember when we thought it wouldn’t get better than Criterion’s DVD back in the day. I was annoyed to find out that the subs didn’t properly translate the dialogue back then.
I actually liked the Mei Ah DVD because I felt like we were getting the real dialogue (and there were much less grammatical errors than expected) and the picture and sound were nice. I was never embarrassed to bring this DVD to friends houses.
I wish Shout could do limited screenings like WellGo.
Shout factory has won best home video of the year!! The competition is over!
Courtesy of Shout on IG: The restoration of HB. https://variety.com/2025/film/news/john-woo-hard-boiled-restoration-cannes-classics-1236398697/