David Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ Lands Back in Theaters
Earlier this year, David Bowie left Earth — albeit too soon. But he’ll be momentarily alive on screen when movie theaters across England screen his first starring film, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the sci-fi pic, a 4k restoration of “Man Who Fell to Earth” returns to theaters on Sept. 9.
Originally released in 1976, the Nicolas Roeg-directed movie stars Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien that visits Earth to retrieve water for his drought-afflicted world. He falls in love with a hotel clerk, played by Candy Clark, while trying to develop new methods to transport the water.
Clark called Bowie’s first movie role “heavenly” and said that working with him was “a joy.”
“David loved to run dialogue, which was a key component of how I needed to work,” explained Clark in an interview with Variety earlier this year. “We’d run it backwards and forwards. He wanted to get it perfect. We’d wrap a scene and instead of going off to rest, we’d start running dialogue on the next scene that was coming up while the crew was setting up the shot. And the dialogue in this film was so good, none of us wanted to improvise a word.”
Distributed by Park Circus, the restoration, which has been in the works since 2015, was done by Studiocanal. “Man Who Fell to Earth” is expected to expand to the U.S. and Germany as well. The film will also be released on Blu-ray in its restored version on Oct. 10 in the U.K.
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