Paramount Pictures has announced the upcoming release of Frank Capra’s beloved Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life in a brand new 4K Ultra HD edition which has been fully restored from the original film negative.

Paramount spent over a year painstakingly restoring the perennial favourite, using the original nitrate negative along with two fine grain masters made in the 1940s. Each element was carefully scanned using the very latest technology to both preserve the delicate negative and create the best possible digital image. 13 of the 14 reels of the original negative survived, but portions had begun to deteriorate so the best image was selected from one of the three original sources on a shot-by-shot basis.

The 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack will feature the film in 4K high definition, as well as a colorized version on Blu-ray, along with three special features new to 4K Ultra HD disc: “Restoring a Beloved Classic,” “Secrets from the Vault,” and “It’s A Wonderful Wrap Party.”

Released in 1946, It’s a Wonderful Life stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a desperately frustrated businessman on the verge of suicide, who is visited by a guardian angel to show him what the world would have been like had George never existed.

The 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray versions of the remastered It’s a Wonderful Life will be released by Paramount on October 29th 2019.