They are timeless cinema classics that have largely been consigned to the late-night graveyard slots on the small screen. Movies such as Taxi Driver, South Pacific, Top Gun and a string of Bond films were the blockbusters that once put bums on velour seats. But in a back-to-the-future move, they are to be seen in their natural habitat again. A new breed of distributor is buying the cinema rights, enhancing and digitising old movie prints, and putting them back on the big screen.
New "classics nights" have been so successful that one national cinema chain, Cineworld, is about to expand its range. When it showed the Tom Cruise hit Top Gun recently, takings outgrossed new film releases. Analysts predict audiences will rocket as more venues equip themselves with new digital equipment and start showing a wider variety of old classics.
This article appears in full in THE SCOTSMAN