Hard Boiled 4K Restoration Featured in Variety Ahead of Cannes Classics Premiere

We’re proud to announce that John Woo’s action classic Hard Boiled has been beautifully restored in 4K and will premiere at Cannes Classics 2024. The restoration has received major coverage in Variety, highlighting the technical complexity and artistic care involved in bringing this cult favorite back to life.

The restoration was a collaborative effort led by Shout! Studios, with Duplitech providing the full digital restoration and Dolby Vision HDR color grading. Our own Michael Coronado, Film Restoration Specialist, and Blake David-Blasingame, Supervising Colorist, are both featured in the article for their integral roles in overcoming the film’s extensive physical and visual damage.

“The element exhibited noticeable frame shifts and occasional warping, due to shrinkage,” said Coronado. “One of the biggest challenges was restoring high-action sequences—gunfire, explosions, rapid movement—that required painstaking, frame-by-frame manual cleanup.”

Blake David-Blasingame added,

“With over 2,900 shots across the film’s 128-minute runtime, maintaining color consistency was no small feat. Many scenes had to be graded shot-by-shot to preserve the original visual tone while delivering a modern Dolby Vision HDR experience.”

The final restoration is derived from the original camera negative sourced from the Hong Kong Film Archive. It includes a Dolby Vision HDR master and a P3 Digital Cinema version that will screen at Cannes.

We’re honored to be part of this important preservation effort and thrilled that a new generation of audiences will be able to experience Hard Boiled as John Woo intended—restored, reloaded, and ready to fire.