Studiocanal has dropped a fresh trailer for the 1992 biopic that earned Downey his first Oscar nomination, ahead of a UK 4K Blu-ray release this November.
Studiocanal has put out a brand new trailer for the 4K restoration of Chaplin, the 1992 biopic that gave Robert Downey Jr his first Oscar nomination and announced him as a serious leading man. The trailer, posted on the studio's YouTube channel on Friday, arrives ahead of a 4K UHD Blu-ray release in the UK this November, according to FirstShowing.net.
There's no theatrical re-release planned. This is strictly a collector's item for anyone who wants Richard Attenborough's film looking as sharp as it possibly can.
Chaplin traces the silent-era icon's life from a grim childhood in English music halls to global stardom in America, told in flashback as an aging Charlie Chaplin walks his editor through the manuscript of his autobiography. Attenborough, who by then had already made Gandhi and Cry Freedom, directed from a script credited to William Boyd, Bryan Forbes and William Goldman, built on a story by Diana Hawkins and drawn from Chaplin's own memoir and David Robinson's biography.
Downey plays Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr, and it's the performance most people point to when they talk about how he became a movie star in the first place, long before Iron Man. He's surrounded by a genuinely stacked cast. Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Kline, Dan Aykroyd, Penelope Ann Miller, David Duchovny, Moira Kelly, Marisa Tomei and Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie's actual daughter, all show up. John Barry wrote the score.
Funny thing about Chaplin is it bombed when it opened in December 1992. The film picked up three Oscar nominations, including Downey's for Best Actor, but walked away empty-handed and didn't recoup its budget at the box office. FirstShowing.net notes it currently sits at a modest 3.6 average on Letterboxd, which tells you the reappraisal hasn't exactly turned it into a cult favourite, just a film people have quietly come around on over three decades.
That gap between its reputation now and its reception then is really the whole story of this restoration. Nobody's pretending Chaplin was some misunderstood masterpiece waiting to be rediscovered. It's a solid, old-fashioned biopic carried by one extraordinary central performance, the kind of film that mattered more for what it launched than for what it won.
For Downey Jr, who's spent the better part of two decades as one of the biggest stars on the planet, it's a reminder of where that whole run started. Studiocanal hasn't said whether the restoration will get any kind of India release or streaming rollout. For now, it's a UK Blu-ray date in November and a trailer for the faithful to pick apart frame by frame.
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