ORIGINAL THE WICKER MAN RETURNS — 14 MINUTES LONGER

Forty years after it was originally released, Robin Hardy’s classic horror film The Wicker Man has been scheduled to return to the screens on Sept. 27, fourteen minutes longer than it was when it originally opened, Screen Daily reported today (Tuesday). Hardy told the British trade publication that he had received word from StudioCanal that it had located a print of his original cut. “They plan, and this is the exciting bit, to actually release it,” he said. “This version has never been restored before, has never been shown in U.K. theaters before, has never been converted to Blu-ray before. This version will — optimistically — be known as the Final Cut.” The magazine Cinefantastique once called the film “the Citizen Kane of horror movies.” A remake produced in 2006 was damned by critics, however. A.O. Scott in the New York Times called the direction by Neil LaBute “comically inept.” No word on whether The Wicker Man: The Final Cut will be released in the U.S.