https://www.tickmarq.com/...ST00001268

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Sign O’ The Times is widely celebrated for capturing the artist at his creative peak—blending electrifying concert footage with cinematic storytelling, powerful visuals, and genre-defying sound. Now, enhanced with IMAX’s precision surround sound audio, customized theatre geometry, and crystal-clear images, Prince’s virtuoso performance is set to mesmerize fans old and new in the most epic format available. “Prince – Sign O’ The Times” features some of Prince’s most iconic tracks, including “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” the anthemic title track “Sign O’ The Times,” and “U Got The Look,” Prince’s smash hit duet with Sheena Easton. The film showcases Prince’s unparalleled musicianship, stagecraft, and style, highlighting his timeless impact on music and popular culture.

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See also: https://mods.org/movies/prince/

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Note the parts I bolded: to me these would suggest a new (4K? 8K?) scan, as well as a new multi-channel audio mix.

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There apparently was a 4K restoration that was being shown in 2022: https://deadline.com/2022...234961368/ . Most likely this IMAX version is using that 4K restoration.

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[Edited 7/11/25 12:55pm]

And yet still without Girls & Boys (following Housequake), Let’s Go Crazy, When Doves Cry, Purple Rain, 1999 (following If I Was Your Girlfriend) and Kiss (following Forever In My Life) which are missing from the film.

(Information from https://princevault.com/i..._The_Times)

rap said:

rap said:

Ramzoo said:

rap said:

And yet still without Girls & Boys (following Housequake), Let’s Go Crazy, When Doves Cry, Purple Rain, 1999 (following If I Was Your Girlfriend) and Kiss (following Forever In My Life) which are missing from the film.

(Information from https://princevault.com/i..._The_Times)

The first time I watched the movie, I noticed it. Despite "Little Red Corvette" (as segued with "Play In The Sunshine"), I think that it was meant 2 B focused on self titled album.

You can see snippets of some of them in the U Got the Look video.

happyshopper said:

I assume this has nothing to do with the Estate and is just the company that bought the rights to the film years ago. So won’t be new tracks added, or anything exciting.

Indeed. And Michael Howe touched on this in an interview. Pity, I'd LOVE to see them.

Did it get canceled? the linked page doesnt' show it.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

rap said:

And yet still without Girls & Boys (following Housequake), Let’s Go Crazy, When Doves Cry, Purple Rain, 1999 (following If I Was Your Girlfriend) and Kiss (following Forever In My Life) which are missing from the film.

(Information from https://princevault.com/i..._The_Times)

That's fine. Makes the film all about the sott album. Plus the film was never a true authentic live document anyway. All the sound was re recorded for one thing.

As far as I understand, this is wrong. the sound is the original recorded LIVE AUDIO, the video is mostly or in parts re-shot at Paisley Park.

Rough said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

rap said: That's fine. Makes the film all about the sott album. Plus the film was never a true authentic live document anyway. All the sound was re recorded for one thing.

As far as I understand, this is wrong. the sound is the original recorded LIVE AUDIO, the video is mostly or in parts re-shot at Paisley Park.

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Yep. Only bits and pieces of audio were rerecorded at PP, the dialogues, for example, and perhaps a few other smaller parts. For me, this makes this film even more special, as live releases in the pop/rock genre traditionally involve having to rerecord a lot of audio, sometimes even going as far completely replacing the lead vocals and instrument solos that were messed up live – not Prince, he didn't need to rerecord the music or his singing, he just needed better visuals.

Kares said:

Rough said:

As far as I understand, this is wrong. the sound is the original recorded LIVE AUDIO, the video is mostly or in parts re-shot at Paisley Park.

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Yep. Only bits and pieces of audio were rerecorded at PP, the dialogues, for example, and perhaps a few other smaller parts. For me, this makes this film even more special, as live releases in the pop/rock genre traditionally involve having to rerecord a lot of audio, sometimes even going as far completely replacing the lead vocals and instrument solos that were messed up live – not Prince, he didn't need to rerecord the music or his singing, he just needed better visuals.

he probably only did some overdubs (replacing "Holland" with "Uptown" on some tracks and maybe some more things here and there) and edit tracks or something.

happyshopper said:

I assume this has nothing to do with the Estate and is just the company that bought the rights to the film years ago. So won’t be new tracks added, or anything exciting.

SDE: Michael, one thing I must ask you about is the Sign O’ The Times film. It isn’t part of this box set. Why not?

MH: I can do my best to explain why not. The short-ish version is that Prince sold the rights to the film in 1987 and the film went through a number of different rights-holders basically, and the difficulty in untangling all of those rights worldwide, was so problematic that we couldn’t really figure out how best to do it and present the film as part of the overall body of work. It’s unfortunate – we intended to – but the rights issues became so problematic, primarily because Prince sold them in the early days, that we could not disentangle every single knot and get it agreed upon in time to include in this body of work. And unfortunately, the film rights extend to both of the concerts that were recorded as part of the film rights – meaning Rotterdam and Antwerp – so we couldn’t really use any of the music from those two shows [either]. So as a result, what we wanted to do was make this the most comprehensive look at the album and the music we possibly could, and then I hope at some point – this is just me thinking aloud – at some point in the future I hope we can represent the film in a more holistic and comprehensive way.

tomds said:

It's gonna be a beautiful nighr was definitely re-recorded. No way that was how it actually sounded in concert. Same for the Sheila E rap. She never pulled that off in concert like we hear it in the movie.

And yet it wasn't re-recorded and she killed it on the third night in Roitterdam (I was at the show back in the day and just listened to teh audience recording again that sounds pretty decent.)
The original performancxe was more fierce than what is in the movie, for the movie some shouts from Prince at the start were removed for the movie, then the rest is pretty much the same including Sheila's rap.
Same for Hot Thing, only Sheila E's prcussion solo at the start of the song was removed for the movie the rest is the same.
Forever in my life/It was a mix of two shows (Antwerp and Rotterdam) the end part (from Boni on to the end is also from the last Rotterdam show and is also teh same as in the movie (except for some extra acoustic soloing from Prince that wasn't in the movie during the It portion.)

it seems he removed more things than that he added things to the audio for the movie

[Edited 7/15/25 12:09pm]

Rough said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

rap said: That's fine. Makes the film all about the sott album. Plus the film was never a true authentic live document anyway. All the sound was re recorded for one thing.

As far as I understand, this is wrong. the sound is the original recorded LIVE AUDIO, the video is mostly or in parts re-shot at Paisley Park.

Just listen to the bootlegs out there.

This is only partially true, some songs may sound as they were kept as is, but there's a significant sum of overdubs all over the place, sometimes straight re-recordings of vocal and or guitars.

Keep in mind that the sound stage at PP was directly wired to the console in Studio A, so we might as well listening to a mix of parts recorded in PP superimposed on the original live takes, although the bad lip sync shots transitioning to obviously real live takes makes it really hard to know what's what.

What I would really like to know is why-oh-why the movie includes a pan shot of Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy, June 14th 1987, right before "Confusion!" and the mic drop in « It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night ».

I can confirm the date because this pan shot ends on the big ol' head of a funk-faced 15-year-old bonatoc dancing like a lunatic.

French fans could confirm it is indeed Bercy (as we froggies nicknamed it) indoors, judging by the architecture, the ads ("AGFA", "Kanterbräu") and by the WHOLE arena shakin’ their asses.

Even though the lightning is pretty poor (you have to use VLC's gamma and brightness to enhance the image), which could explain the "unusable material" that led to the whole reshooting in PP, the image definition is decent, and it had me wonder for almost 40 years if there are pro-shots of the 1987 Paris concerts rotting somewhere on earth.

If you also consider the « U Got The Look » video was shot in Paris presumably June 16th, it makes me wonder even more.

Here are some screenshots :

[Edited 7/15/25 14:29pm]

June 14 and 15 Paris shows are circulating on video and both of them or at least one of them was planned to be released 6 or 7 years ago by some bootleggers so they are in more hands since then.

JorisE73 said:

June 14 and 15 Paris shows are circulating on video and both of them or at least one of them was planned to be released 6 or 7 years ago by some bootleggers so they are in more hands since then.

And I again I have higher hopes on that than anything off the Estate!

alandail said:

JorisE73 said:

I believe LeRoy Bennett said in an interview there is a pro shot SOTT concert in the vault.

JorisE73 said:

rap said:

I believe LeRoy Bennett said in an interview there is a pro shot SOTT concert in the vault.

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There are also 2" multitracks of a couple of SOTT shows so they could be remixed into Atmos or whatever.

flaton said:

And why are two german companies have billboards inside bercy?

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Kanterbräu is French. Agfa was known all over Europe.

Mindbells9 said:

JorisE73 said:

June 14 and 15 Paris shows are circulating on video and both of them or at least one of them was planned to be released 6 or 7 years ago by some bootleggers so they are in more hands since then.

Who or what put a stop to its release?

I ahve no idea. Some regular boot dealers mailed a couple of times that these were coming back in 2017-2018. Never heard anything about it again when they didn't were released

Correction: It was the video and soundboard for the 14th and soundboard audio only for the 15th.

[Edited 7/17/25 12:27pm]

https://www.amctheatres.c...imes-80846

They should have pulled the You've Got the Look section. That section looked HORRIBLE in IMAX. It would have been cool if it got replaced with some interview/making-of footage or a short doc that led back into the concert. Overall, still an incredible concert movie.