STACK #249 July 2025

MOVIE FEATURE

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Victoria Baldock and Delvene Delaney

”To be honest, all of this really just indicates how much the audience loves it and what it means to everybody,” says Baldock proudly. Delvene Delaney has been a prominent

face on Australian television for five decades and has worked with Hoges since The Paul Hogan Show in 1973. More importantly, she was married for 44 years to the late John Cornell, the mastermind behind Hogan’s stardom and Crocodile Dundee ’s global success. In today’s cinematic landscape

Linda Kozlowski and Paul Hogan

dominated by superhero franchises and massive

blockbusters, it’s easy to forget just how huge Crocodile Dundee was. Made independently with funds raised through public share investment, the 1986 film exploded worldwide, earning a staggering $328 million from a modest $8.8 million budget, equivalent to around $2.8 billion in today’s money. The film single handedly put Australia on the map, transforming the tourism industry and global perceptions of the country. The new Encore Cut restoration is nothing short of spectacular, with the film’s original negative painstakingly salvaged after decades of neglect. ”The restoration was done by The Grainery (formerly Fixafilm) in Canberra, who’ve restored quite a few other iconic Australian films,” explains Delaney. ”And lucky for us that they had, because that gave them the knowledge of what the green is in an Australian piece of grass, as opposed to a European piece of grass. And how the sunshine emanates from the screen, you know, there’s quite a different colour grade required for Australian films.” ”Particularly the outback, too,” adds Baldock. ”The red earth and the blue skies – it’s a different colour.” ”I had no idea it would be so labour intensive. It’s an artform, really,” says Delaney of the restoration process. ”It would have been different if it had been done elsewhere without that authenticity – and authenticity underpins Crocodile Dundee ’s message.” In addition to Crocodile Dundee: The Encore Cut , Delaney and Baldock have also directed an extensive feature-length documentary, Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee , which will be included in the upcoming physical media release this month.

Australia’s most legendary icon, Crocodile Dundee , has been given a spiffy new Encore Cut 4K remaster, ensuring his legacy lives on. Words Glenn Cochrane

C rocodile Dundee is one of our greatest exports – if not the greatest – and a legacy worth preserving. To ensure that it transcends time, however, a few tweaks have been made so that future generations can fully embrace all that the film represents. ”Independent of the 'woke' aspect, that’s just not what a hero would do,” says Delvene Delaney when chatting with STACK , referring to two insensitive and outdated moments that have been removed from the film for the new Encore Cut . The decision to remove two jokes has been met with pushback from some quarters, with some arguing that the film should remain a cultural timestamp. However, by addressing modern social standards, the film’s preservation is ultimately ensured, and it’s been protected from potentially more significant interference. ”Those scenes have been out for about 12 years internationally,” she explains. ”They were just never addressed in Australia. And it wasn’t until we showed Paul [Hogan] a sample of the restoration and he said, ’Oh there’s a scene in there that I don’t like’ and I said ’I know what scene and I don’t like it either’. And he said, ’Well, take it out,’ and we did.” ”It’s frames,” explains Victoria Baldock,

Director Peter Faiman (Left)

Delaney’s co-producer. ”It gets discussed as if it’s scenes, but it’s not. It’s literally just a few frames that are a minute detail in the arc of the story. And yeah, they’d been taken out by distributors many years ago.” Over the years, distributors and television networks have snipped away at the film to achieve classification standards or fit time slots. By taking control of the restoration, with input from Paul Hogan, director Peter Faiman, and others, Delvene and Victoria have made the bare minimum of alterations, effectively futureproofing the film and ensuring it isn’t butchered by others.

• Crocodile Dundee: The Encore Cut and Crocodile Dundee II are out July 16

16 JULY 2025

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