Roy Scheider returns to the big screen in Jaws and Beautiful Blue Eyes

Excitement for movie lovers that started with news of the re-release of Steven Spielberg’s epic Jaws in RealD 3D and IMAX, starring two-time Academy Award Nominee Roy Scheider (The French Connection, All That Jazz), is now bigger than ever. Global distributor MovieFarm announced that Scheider’s powerful final performance in the thriller Beautiful Blue Eyes, will also be seen by audiences exclusively at 431 Regal theaters across the US, from September 9, with its world premiere at NYC’s Regal Union Square on September 8.

Movie critic Pete Hammond, said of writer/director Joshua Newton’s film, “A beautifully made movie that will have audiences talking long afterward.”

The story is about a NYPD cop (Scheider) who has spent decades haunted by the murder of his family during WWII. When he believes he has found the Nazi responsible, he enlists his estranged son to help him exact revenge.

The cast also includes Scott Cohen (The Americans, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Sarah Bolger (A Good Woman is Hard to Find, The Tudors), Helmut Berger (The Damned, The Godfather: Part III), and Alexander Newton – who plays the young Joseph (Roy Scheider’s character). Alexander also wrote and performed the title song.

Scheider told director Joshua Newton that he signed on to star in the film (then with a working title of “Iron Cross”), because of the meaning of “Beautiful Blue Eyes” in the film. Three days before his passing, Scheider asked Newton to change the movie’s name to Beautiful Blue Eyes, which Newton has done in Scheider’s honor.

Sadly, Scheider never got to see Beautiful Blue Eyes, as he passed away in 2008 after battling with multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer that came back after he cut his leg while moving house.

It’s no secret that making movies is hard. To make matters even harder for Beautiful Blue Eyes’ director Newton, the film was incomplete when Scheider passed away in 2008. Due to a fault with one of the cameras, some shots had to be left out.

But now, AI technology has repaired the damaged frames allowing Newton to edit and release the movie, as he originally envisioned.

A previous version of the movie won awards at festivals, but the film was never distributed. Instead, Newton and fellow producer Kevin Farr, decided to hold back the release of Beautiful Blue Eyes until a time when it would be possible to show the correct version of the film to a wide audience in theaters.

Originally filmed in 2008 and re-post-produced in 2022, Beautiful Blue Eyes is being released in 4K.