Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old trailer brings The Great War to life

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

This year marked the 100th anniversary of the Armistice of November 11, 1918, which brought an end to The Great War (World War I), and a new documentary from Peter Jackson will be bringing the events of that conflict to life like never before. Warner Bros. have released a new trailer for THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD, which shows off the incredible restoration work which has gone into making the 100-year-old film footage like damn near brand-new. That may be a bit of an embellishment, but the results really are outstanding.

Produced and directed by Peter Jackson, THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD is "an extraordinary look at the soldiers and events of the Great War, using film footage captured at the time, now presented as the world has never seen. By utilizing state-of-the-art restoration, colorization and 3D technologies, and pulling from 600 hours of BBC archival interviews, Jackson puts forth an intensely gripping, immersive and authentic experience through the eyes and voices of the British soldiers who lived it." Jackson and his team combed through hundreds of hours of footage from the Imperial War Museum's archives and used state-of-the-art techniques in order to sharpen, colourize, and convert them to stereoscopic 3D. "I wanted to reach through the fog of time and pull these men into the modern world," Jackson said. "So they can regain their humanity once more, rather than be seen only as Charlie Chaplin-type figures in the vintage archive film."

Warner Bros. will release THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD in select theaters on December 17th and 26th with the help of Fathom Events. In addition to a special introduction to the film by Peter Jackson, the screenings will be immediately followed by "special content offering firsthand insights into what went into this groundbreaking feat of research, filmmaking and storytelling."