Disney will release a 4K restoration of the original Disney classic Cinderella on Disney+.
Cinderella’s restoration has been a source of controversy for years — in 2005, Disney released the film on Blu-ray and sold millions of copies. However, as many have noted in the years since the 2005 digital restoration significantly altered the colours and scrubbed details from the original animation.
The Controversy Over Cinderella’s Restoration
Complaints about the restoration continued through 2018, when a tweet about the restoration went viral. The tweet revealed that Disney’s whole process of “restoration” on high-profile releases is actually completely destructive of the original image.
Instead of just cleaning dirt, fixing scratches, and adjusting colour timing, they rotoscope every frame of character animation and isolate it from the original scene. The end result is a picture free of any of the natural grain pattern and gate weave that you’d expect from something shot on film, completely disguising the film’s age and medium.
The New Restoration
The new restoration promises to correct these mistakes by going back to the source.
“We began the process by pulling the original nitrate negative from the Library of Congress and scanning the successive exposure color records in 4K. We then did a cleaning pass to remove dirt and as many artifacts as possible,” said Director of Restoration for Walt Disney Studios Kevin Schaeffer.
“The current available restoration tools allowed us to produce a sharper and higher quality image than previous efforts. To make sure we didn’t lose any of the detail or artistic choices of the filmmakers, we turned to Disney Animation legends and authorities, including Michael Giaimo and Eric Goldberg.”
Cinderella 4K Release Date
The restoration premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, followed by a physical release only available to Disney Movie Club members.
The Cinderella 4K release will be hitting Disney+ on August 25 giving Disney fans the chance to see Cinderella like never before.