Yes, it appears Nine will be showing this Disney thriller for the first time on Friday (9Gem in Sydney and Brisbane). Once a Seven staple, first run around the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Also briefly on Ten for a few years in 2018.
Wonder what print they’ll get, there’s been several.
Seven’s master is rather terrible, a 16:9 full screen matted or panned and scanned, severley altering the Super 35mm Zeiss lens shots and the interior and exterior panning and action scenes up in the sky on the plane, it almost looks blatantly cropped.
The visual and audio quality never seemed great either, despite it being a later file from 2006 give or take (as it had the Buena Vista TV logo with the Disney castle at the end), probably for HD TV era. Unsure whether this was native or upscaled HD.
They played two versions too, one with the lengthy opening titles and theme, the other cutting to the opening parachute scene (usually for m/c prime time).
I’d imagine Foxtel’s was too. Can’t recall what Ten’s was, but I’d think it’d be anamorphic by then.
The early 2000s DVD transfer (of a poorer scan - which I have somewhere and should dust off) is even the original 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen, as is the Disney Plus stream and other VOD services.
The latest transfer is a 4K scan of the original Kodak negative in HDR 10 with 2160p quality, Dolby Atmos and 2.40:1 aspect for that 2018 physical release, but released again in Dolby Vision a couple of years ago.
Highly unlikely Nine will have received any of the modern copies though and the re-masters were a different studio (Sony) who handle the film in North America. As we know, Disney (who handled it overseas - technically “Buena Vista International” like the movie Unbreakable as it was a split distributor and international) no longer release physical media in Australia anyway, including Fox.
Still a fab movie and one of my guilty pleasure favourites. Get off my plane! 