Cinderella’s long-awaited 4K restoration is finally coming to Disney+
After 18 years, Disney is finally correcting one of its most beloved classics
Despite being in league with studio execs who want to drag the WGA strike on “until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” sometimes Disney does a good thing. Though positive news out of the studio this year has been sparse between Quantumania, The Dial Of Destiny, a remake of The Little Mermaid, and another Pixar bust, Disney will finally put its recent 4k restoration of Cinderella on Disney+.
We know. When we see the words Cinderella in a headline, we immediately assume another remake or sequel is coming. Maybe a Disney+ series about the Fairy Godmother told through the perspective of Bert, Mert, and Luke. That isn’t the case. The 4K Cinderella is a win for people who want to see a Disney masterwork in all its glory.
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 colors and scrubbed details from the animation. Complaints continued through 2018 when a tweet by @stephen_duigan about the restoration went viral.
“Disney’s whole process of ‘restoration’ on high-profile releases is actually completely destructive of the original image, I.e., the original cel animation and background art as shot on film 80–30 years ago,” Duigan writes. “Instead of just cleaning dirt/fixing scratches/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 you’d expect from something shot on film, completely disguising the film’s age and medium.”
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.”
Per Verge, the restoration premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, followed by a physical release only available to Disney Movie Club members. 4K discs will be available to all on August 1, with the film hitting Disney+ on August 25.