\'Raiders of the Lost Ark\' to Receive Imax Re-Release

By DAVE ITZKOFF

It's the kind of revelation that would melt the face of any die-hard Indiana Jones fan (this time, with joy): “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the 1981 adventure film that introduced that globetrotting archaeologist, will receive a one-week Imax release next month, Lucasfilm said on Tuesday.

“For me, it's always been the bigger the screen, the better,” Steven Spielberg, who directed “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and the three subsequent “Indiana Jones” sequels, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “It's the only marked contrast we have to the generations that are seeing our movies on phones and hand-held platforms. It's a complete relief to be able to see a film that many people have just experienced on a palm-sized platform technology, suddenly hurled at that them on an Imax-sized screen.”

Lucasfilm, the studio of the “Indiana Jones” executive producer George Lucas, said the Imax version of “Raiders o f the Lost Ark” will receive a one-week theatrical release beginning on Sept. 7, in advance of the Blu-ray release of the Indiana Jones movies, which will go on sale Sept. 18. A list of theaters that will be showing the film can be found online at www.imax.com.

Mr. Spielberg, who with the sound designer Ben Burtt supervised the conversion of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to Imax, said that no special effects or other visual elements of the film were changed. The audio, he said, had been enhanced for surround sound: “When the boulder is rolling, chasing Indy through the cave, you really feel the boulder in your stomach, the way you do when a marching band passes by and you're standing right next to it.”

But Mr. Spielberg â€" who is also in the process of converting his movie “Jurassic Park” to 3-D for an anniversary re-release next year â€" said he had “no plans” to do Imax conversions of his other films, whether earlier efforts like “Jaws” or †œClose Encounters of the Third Kind,” or any of the “Indiana Jones” sequels.

“‘Raiders' is a movie of my own, that I can actually stand to watch from beginning to end,” Mr. Spielberg said. “In that sense, it has a special place in my heart. I don't rewrite it in my mind, I'm not kicking myself for what I didn't do. I'm just going along for the ride like everybody else. It's one of the few films that I've directed that I can sit back objectively and observe and enjoy with my family or whoever I'm with, or even alone. Most of my other films, I'm hypercritical of them.