David Lynch fans in the UK and France can soon enjoy the auteur’s 2006 nightmarish psychological thriller Inland Empire on the big screen in glorious 4K, with Variety revealing today that Studiocanal is releasing a newly remastered version supervised by Lynch himself.
Variety also revealed that Studiocanal will release Inland Empire on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.K. on June 19, France on June 28 and Germany on June 29, with special features including deleted scenes, the documentary LYNCH (one) and interviews with the man himself.
The new master was undertaken by The Criterion Collection with Studiocanal support, and features 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtracks, newly remastered by Lynch and original rerecording mixers Dean Hurley and Ron Eng (so you can hear that terrifying sound design in crisp, ear-splitting quality).
Inland Empire stars frequent Lynch collaborators Laura Dern and Justin Theroux, as well as Jeremy Irons, Karolina Gruszka and the late, great Harry Dean Stanton, and follows:
Nikki (Dern), a once-celebrated actress who lands the lead role in a film by director Kingsley Stewart (Irons) alongside co-star Devon (Theroux). The production is a remake of a work filmed several years ago but never finished because the main actors died before shooting wrapped. Very much on the edge, Nikki’s reality soon begins to merge with her fictional role as she passes through realities and enters a nightmarish labyrinth that leads her down interconnected rabbit holes on a hallucinatory odyssey.
The film – shot entirely digitally – features some of Lynch’s most infamously terrifying shots (you know the one we’re talking about), and takes the director’s experimentalism and surrealism to the extreme. It is considered to be one of Dern’s best performances, and is regularly placed in ‘Best of the ’00s’ lists.
UK viewers can catch Inland Empire from Studiocanal in select theaters on May 26, with Potemkine Films bringing it to France on May 31.
