'Pink Floyd at Pompeii' Film to Get Imax Release, Official Live Album

“Pink Floyd at Pompeii — MCMLXXII,” the rock band’s 1972 concert film/documentary, will revisit theaters with a restored version that is coming to Imax and other cinema screens starting April 24, followed shortly by a first-time stand-alone release of the soundtrack as an official live album on May 2.

Trafalgar Releasing and Sony Music Vision are bringing the film back into theaters, to be seen in a 4K digital remaster created from the original 35mm footage. Steven Wilson, whose remixes are well known to fans of classic rock, was behind the board for a new Dolby mix of the movie’s audio.

The live album will come out just a week after the film’s reappearance in cinemas, with Legacy, Sony’s catalog division, issuing it on CD, vinyl, digital audio and Dolby Atmos formats. It’s the first time the music from the film has been commercially released as a stand-alone item. (Its only previous physical media iteration was an abridged CD edition that was only available as part of a larger retrospective boxed set, “The Early Years 1965-1972,” in 2016.)

Said Lana Topham, director of restoration for Pink Floyd: “Since 1994, I have searched for the elusive film rushes of ‘Pink Floyd at Pompeii,’ so the recent discovery of the 1972 original 35mm cut negative was a very special moment. The newly restored version presents the first full 90-minute cut, combining the 60-minute source edit of the performance with the additional Abbey Road Studios documentary segments filmed shortly after.”

The documentary segments referred to capture the band in the recording studio working on what would become its most popular album, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” which came out in 1973 and broke the group out to a wider level of stardom. That footage was originally added to a 1974 reissue of the film that expanded it from roughly 60 to 90 minutes

The songs filmed at the Pompeii location for the live performances predate the recording of “Dark Side” and include material dating back to Pink Floyd’s first album, on up through the then-current “Meddle.” The concert footage was shot in 1971 among the ruins of the ancient Roman Amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy, sans audience.

Tickets for screenings go on sale March 5 at 6 a.m. PT/9 ET at pinkfloyd.film. The movie will show on standard screens as well as in the Imax format.

Of the remixed audio for the film, Steven Wilson said, “Ever since my dad brainwashed me as a kid by playing The Dark Side of the Moon on repeat, Pink Floyd has been my favourite band. They are my “Beatles”, deeply ingrained in my musical DNA. I first saw Pompeii from a grainy print at a local cinema. It made an incredible impression on me with its untethered and exploratory rock music made by four musicians that seemed to epitomise the notion of intellectual cool. It was an honour to remix the soundtrack to accompany Lana Topham’s incredible restoration of the film, which looks like it could’ve been filmed yesterday.”

A Blu-Ray/DVD edition of the film will go to retail at the same time as the soundtrack album, offering two distinct edits — the full feature film, which run an hour and 25 minutes, and a version that only includes the concert material, which has a running time of one hour and three minutes.