Forget about the completion of The Other Side of the Wind or Criterion Collection prepping its Blu-ray release of The Magnificent Ambersons for just a few moments, there is some planet-sized Wellesian news to report.
Fathom Events, Hasbro Studios, and SHOUT! Factory revealed today that the 1986 animated film Transformers: The Movie will be returning to movie theaters nationwide for one night only. The film featured Orson Welles’ final big screen performance as the voice of the planet devouring Unicron.
Fans can catch what is being billed as a completely remastered and restored movie from the original elements at select theaters on Thursday, September 27, at 7 p.m. (For a list of theaters, visit fathomevents.com)
Welles recording his lines for Transformers just five days before his death on October 10, 1985.
Transformers director Nelson Shin has said that Welles was pleased with the script and expressed an admiration for animated films.
However, Welles told biographer Barbara Leaming hours after a recording session, “You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that changed from one thing to another. The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I’m destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.”
Other voices actors included Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy, Judd Nelson, Casey Kasem and Robert Stack.
The recent play Mercury Man: The Last Performance of Orson Welles by Joel Pettigrew offers a fictionalized recounting of the recording session.
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