Queen Budapest in cinemas: watch the trailer for the upcoming concert film

From October 7th to 11th, "Queen Budapest" will hit Italian cinemas: the film documenting the historic concert held by the English band on July 27, 1986, at the Népstadion in the Hungarian capital. Restored in 4K from the original 35mm prints, the film brings Queen back to the big screen in the full swing of their final tour with Freddie Mercury. The official trailer is now available online (see below).

A night beyond the Iron Curtain

The concert was part of "The Magic Tour" and took on a significance that went far beyond music. In a Europe still divided by the Cold War, it was the first stadium rock show by a Western band ever staged beyond the Iron Curtain. All 80,000 available tickets sold out, while an estimated further 45,000 people listened to the show from outside the Népstadion. Among the crowd were also spectators who had travelled from Poland and from what was then the Soviet Union.
Seventeen cameras and around 40 kilometres of film stock were used to document the event. The entire production also received approval from the Hungarian government, an unprecedented move for a rock concert of that scale in a state of the socialist bloc.

Queen at the peak of their form

On stage were Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon, running through a setlist dominated by classics such as “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Under Pressure”, “Radio Ga Ga”, “A Kind Of Magic”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, “Hammer To Fall”, “Who Wants To Live Forever”, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions”. One of the most striking moments was the acoustic rendition of “Tavaszi Szél Vizet Áraszt”, a Hungarian folk song that Mercury had learned specifically for the occasion. The film also intercuts footage of the show with sequences filmed during the band's stay in Budapest.

The last tour with Freddie Mercury

The film's historical value is heightened by what would happen shortly afterwards. The Budapest show was in fact the last Queen concert with Mercury to be professionally filmed. After that night, only five more dates remained before the tour's closing performance on August 9, 1986, at Knebworth Park in England.
The "Magic Tour" would thus become the classic line-up's final tour: an epilogue that none of the spectators at the Népstadion could yet have imagined.

The 4K restoration

To mark the fortieth anniversary, "Queen Budapest" has been restored in 4K at Peter Jackson's Park Road Post Production in New Zealand. The sound has also been remixed from scratch, starting from the original multitrack recordings. The new edition includes an interview with Brian May and Roger Taylor, who look back on that night and its significance in the band's history. The film will be distributed in Italy by Nexo Studios from October 7th to 11th, while in other countries it will also screen in IMAX theatres.

The soundtrack and home video editions

On October 30th, Sony Music will release a new edition of the soundtrack, remixed by Queen's own team and available digitally, as a double CD and, for the first time, as a three-LP box set.
The same date will also see the release of the Blu-ray, 4K UHD Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film directed by Hungarian filmmaker János Zsombolyai. Forty years on, "Queen Budapest" remains the document of a band at the height of its live power, and of a night when music symbolically managed to cross the Iron Curtain.

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