Paramount Home Media Tabs Dec. 08 For Blu-ray Release Of The Godfather, Coda: The Death Of Micheal Corleone

Paramount Home Media announced this past week that director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1990 Best Picture nominee, The Godfather: Part III, has been given a new 4K scan of the original camera negative as the baseline for the Dec. 8 Blu-ray debut of Coppola’s re-edited 30^th Anniversary presentation of the film.

Titled The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, Coppola has created new opening and ending sequences for the film, rearranged other scenes and introduced new music cues.   The film has been restored literally frame by frame, with something like 50 different original filming sequences found, restored and then substituted for “lower resolution opticals” used in the original negative.

It was a film that was never planned.   But, after The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II both won Best Picture, the drum beat begin to continue the saga.   By the time The Godfather: Part II was celebrating its 10^th Anniversary, Paramount had already spent over $800,000 on various scripts and treatments.   Nothing came of it.

Meanwhile, Coppola’s Zoetrope (One from the Heart, a marvelous film, but a financial disaster) was struggling financially and then add to that The Cotton Club scandal, so by 1985, 1986 … 1987 … the pressure had grown and grown and the incentives were such that Francis Ford Coppola reunited with Mario Puzo and the process began.   Script, treatment, new script, new direction, another script … the problem that Coppola faced was that the ending of The Godfather: Part II had neatly; brilliantly brought the story of Michael Corleone to an end.   Where do you go from there?

In November of 1989 film production began … and no sooner had filming began when Winona Ryder, who had been cast as Mary Corleone, withdrew from the film.   A scramble for a replacement … every name in Hollywood surfaced, but Coppola surprised everyone by recruiting his daughter, Sofia, as the replacement.   Problem solved.

The film opened at Christmas in 1990 and was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.   Previous to this new presentation, there were at last two different cuts of the film … a theatrical release cut that clocked in at 162 minutes and a “Director’s Cut” that ran 170 minutes.   This new presentation, The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, runs 158 minutes.  

Of note, cinematographer Gordon Willis was nominated for Best Cinematography, so viewing this new restored 4K scan (with frame by frame restoration) should be a real treat.   Dec. 8 … on Blu-ray.  

In other release news from Paramount Home Media this past week, Dec. 8 is also the street date for a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition of director Michael Mann’s 2004 Los Angeles cab-ride thriller, Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.

Bonus features include commentary by director Michael Mann (Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, Manhunter), a deleted scene (with commentary) and five featurettes — “City of Night: The Making of Collateral,” “Special Delivery,” “Shooting on Location: Annie’s Office,” “Tom Cruise & Jamie Foxx Rehearse” and “Visual FX: MTA Train.”