TCM & Film Foundation Team On 4K Restoration Of ‘Giant’

Turner Classic Movies is expanding its partnership with The Film Foundation with a multi-year financial commitment to fund education and restoration of classic movies.

As a result of the expanded relationship announced Friday, a 4K restoration of Warner Bros.’ Giant will world premiere at the TCM Classic Film Festival. Prior to the screening at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz will host a conversation with Film Foundation board member Steven Spielberg, executive director Margaret Bodde, and George Stevens Jr., whose father George Stevens directed the film, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean.

Since its founding by Martin Scorsese more than 30 years ago, The Film Foundation has restored more than 900 classic movies. Scorsese and Spielberg hand-picked Giant as one of the group’s latest restoration projects, working with the Warner Bros. archives team for a year to complete the process.

“Anything that presumes to call itself Giant better have the goods to keep such a lofty promise,” said Spielberg. “Both Edna Ferber and George Stevens far exceeded the title to bring such an epic American story to the big screen and I’m proud to have been a small part of the restoration team of this classic motion picture.”

Stevens won the best directing Oscar for the film based on Ferber’s controversial novel, which was a huge box office hit and earned 10 Academy Award nominations overall.

Giant exposed the marginalization and segregation of Mexican Americans for the first time on the big screen. In her role as Leslie Benedict, Taylor portrays a strong and progressive woman who acts to stem the patterns of injustice.

The new 4K restoration was completed sourcing both the original camera negatives and protection RGB separation master positives for the best possible image, and color corrected in high dynamic range for the latest picture display technology. The audio was sourced primarily from a 1995 protection copy of the Original Magnetic Mono soundtrack. The picture and audio restoration was completed by Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services: Motion Picture Imaging and Post Production Sound.