Arrow Video's 4K Film Restoration Of Writer/Director John Hughes' Sixteen Candles Arrives On Blu-ray On Apr. 14

Arrow Video, with domestic sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a new 4K film restoration of writer/director John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles ready for Blu-ray release on Apr. 14.

What irony, Sixteen Candles is joined at the hip with The Breakfast Club and it was a wonder that Hughes ever got through the maze of pre-production to direct either one of these teen-angst comedy gems.   

The story is very well known that Hughes got an offer to make The Breakfast Club, but only if he could hit the required production budget.   That went on for a while and the film kind of went into limbo.   

And then magic happened, he had to make a living so he delivered the script for National Lampoon’s Vacation (released theatrically in July of 1983) and then another script for Mr. Mom (released in August of the same year) … the former did $61 million at the box office and the latter pulled in $67 million.   

Suddenly John Hughes is the hottest guy in Hollywood.  So Universal Pictures comes knocking on his door and takes The Breakfast Club under its wing, agreeing to absorb the production costs if he delivers Sixteen Candles first.  Deal!

Sixteen Candles arrives in theatres in May of 1984, but not before getting into a ratings battle with the MPAA.   They wanted it rated R, but finally gave it a PG rating.   

It pulled in less than $24 million and the critical reviews weren’t all that hot, but the film is now considered one of the iconic coming-of-age comedies of the 1980s … it certainly made Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall stars, and yes that is John Cusack in one of his early roles.

But get this, the film that everyone was worried about, The Breakfast Club, made its theatrical debut in Mid-February of the following year and pulled in twice what Sixteen Candles did … it also created “The Brat Pack” (for better or worse) — the entire cast of The Breakfast Club, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy, with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore and Andrew McCarthy joining the group after the success of St. Elmo’s Fire in June of 1985.

As to the bonus goodies for Sixteen Candles, there are two viewing options for fans to choose between.   The original theatrical version (clocking in at 92 minutes) and an extended cut featuring the famous “Cafeteria” scene, which didn’t make the final cut (94 minues).

There is also the 2008 retrospective documentary titled Celebrating Sixteen Candles and seven newly-minted featurettes — “Casting Sixteen Candles,” “When Gedde Met Deborah,” “Rudy the Bohunk,” “The In-Between,” “The New Wave Nerd,” “Music for Geeks” and “A Very Eighties Fairytale” — plus both soundtracks are included here (the original theatrical soundtrack and the pre-2003 substitute home soundtrack).   Lastly, there a downloadable pdf file of the shooting script.