Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Celebrates The 40th Anniversary Of Director Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado With A 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack (SteelBook) Edition On Oct. 7

You could make the argument that the Western, a staple of the movie-going experience from the birth of film, and especially in the immediate post-war period of the late 1940s and 50s, had reached its zenith — as a genre — with the release of Sam Peckinpah’s 1968 masterpiece, The Wild Bunch.

 
To quote Deborah Caulfield, reviewing director Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado in the Los Angeles Times’ “Calendar Section” just before it opened in July of 1985: “Ironically, ‘Silverado’ opens shortly before the publication of “Final Cut,” the story of the last big-budget Western, ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ by former United Artists executive Steven Bach.”

 
Caulfield continues, “Michael Cimino’s $40-million-plus movie was a financial disaster that led to UA’s absorption by MGM in 1981.”   And then comes this, “Even before ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ Westerns were unpopular at movie studios.  Should this year’s offerings fail to make dents at the box office, the genre could be retired … permanently.”

 

Clint Eastwood hadn’t directed a Western since The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976, but suddenly within the space of a week or two in 1985 we have Eastwood’s Pale Rider and Kasdan’s Silverado … the Western was back in a big way!   Eastwood’s Unforgiven would arrive in 1992 and win Best Picture (he also won Best Director) ... so the Western, as a genre, was alive and well. 

 
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of this landmark Western, Silverado, on Oct. 7 with the debut of a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition.  Make that a SteelBook 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition!!
 

This 4K restoration is from the original camera negative and the bonus goodies are housed on the companion Blu-ray disc which features the archived group commentary from film historians Frank Thompson, Paul Hutton and Steve Aaron, plus two vintage featurettes — “A Return to Silverado with Kevin Costner” and “The Making of Silverado.”