Sony Music Vision is bringing Queen Budapest back to cinemas and IMAX screens worldwide from October 7, celebrating the 40th anniversary of a landmark moment in the band’s live history.
Distributed internationally by Trafalgar Releasing, the restored concert film will also arrive in Italian cinemas from October 7–11, where it will be distributed exclusively by Nexo Studios. Advance ticket sales in Italy open on August 26.
Recorded on July 27, 1986 at Budapest’s Népstadion during The Magic Tour, Queen Budapest captures the last live performance by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon to be filmed in full. It took place just five concerts before Queen’s final performance with Mercury.
Beyond its significance for the band, the Budapest concert represented an important cultural moment. Queen became the first Western rock band to stage a stadium show behind the Iron Curtain, selling more than 80,000 tickets. Around 45,000 additional fans are estimated to have listened from outside the stadium, with some travelling from Russia and Poland for the event.
Queen on Stage in Budapest
Among the songs featured are We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, Under Pressure and Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen also performed an acoustic arrangement of the traditional Hungarian folk song Tavaszi Szél Vizet Áraszt.
Capturing such a major event required an equally ambitious production. Shot professionally on 35mm by Hungarian cinematographers, the concert used 17 cameras and approximately 40 kilometres of film. Approval was granted by the Hungarian government, an unprecedented move for a communist state at the time.
Alongside the stage performances, viewers also see footage recorded during the five days before the concert, following the four band members around Budapest and showing fans preparing for the event.
A New 4K Restoration
Now, four decades later, the original 35mm material has been restored in 4K at Sir Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production in New Zealand. A new audio mix has also been produced from the original multitrack recordings.
Meanwhile, ahead of the theatrical release, Who Wants To Live Forever has been made available digitally as the second track from Queen Budapest, together with a video and a clip taken from the concert film.
More releases will follow on October 30, when Queen Budapest arrives internationally in several home entertainment and music formats. Its remixed soundtrack will be available digitally and on CD, as well as in a three-LP vinyl box set for the first time. Blu-ray and DVD editions are also scheduled for the same date.
Directed by János Zsombolyai, Queen Budapest returns to the big screen as both a celebration of Queen at the height of The Magic Tour and a document of an unusual moment when a major Western rock act crossed one of the era’s most significant cultural barriers. Forty years later, its restoration gives audiences the chance to experience that performance again in cinemas on a scale much closer to the original event.
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