One of the greatest Westerns of all time is getting a 4K Ultra HD release

The Searchers is considered to be one of the greatest Westerns of all time, and the iconic movie starring John Wayne as Ethan Edwards is set to receive a major upgrade. Warner Archive has meticulously restored and remastered The Searchers from its original VistaVision camera negative and will release the film on 4K Ultra HD on December 17th. Always grateful for another VistaVision transfer on 4K.

Directed by John Ford, the 1956 film stars Wayne as “an ex-Confederate soldier searching for his niece (Natalie Wood), captured by the Comanches who massacred his family. He won’t surrender to hunger, thirst, the elements or loneliness. And in his five-year search, he encounters something unexpected: his own humanity.”

The Searchers underwent an extensive restoration earlier this year and premiered at the 15th annual TCM Film Festival. The movie was “filmed using the 8-perf 35mm VistaVision process, where the negative went through the camera horizontally with double the frame size of traditional 35mm film, thus yielding incredible clarity with great depth of field. The original negative along with yellow separation protection masters were used for this new presentation, to fully restore the film’s original color palette capturing the masterful cinematography of Winton C. Hoch, a frequent Ford collaborator.” The new 4K presentation will be available with Dolby Vision and HDR10, with both the 4K and Blu-ray discs featuring the “original monaural audio track which was restored from the best available source materials to provide a clean and dynamic audio presentation.“

Special Features included on the 4K UHD disc and the Blu-ray disc:  

• Archival Commentary by Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?) on both the 4K and Blu-ray discs.

  On the Blu-ray disc:

• Original Theatrical trailer (HD)
• The Searchers: An Appreciation (HD)
• A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers (HD)
• Newsreel coverage of the film’s world premiere (HD)
• Outtakes (HD)
• Behind the Cameras (segments from the 1956 Warner Bros. Presents TV series): (HD)
  • Meet Jeffrey Hunter
  • Monument Valley
  • Meet Natalie Wood
  • Setting Up Production

The Searchers 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray combo will run you $29.99, while the Blu-ray will go for $21.99.