Legend Films

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Legend Films, a San Diego-based company, was founded in August 2001. The company specializes in the restoration and colorization of classic black and white films for DVD, HDTV and theatrical release. Legend also produces the DVD, designs the packaging and menus, and creates all value-added materials, including interviews and commentary from the original cast and crew when possible. Their primary goal is to make their attempts look as realistic as possible, in addition to letting viewers choose between the original black and white and new colorized versions without changing discs. The company has also created color effects for newer films, such as Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.

Barry Sandrew, founder and president of Legend Films.

Legend Films' founder, Barry Sandrew, pioneered and patented the first all digital colorization technology and recently reinvented the process by patenting the most advanced colorization technology that largely automates the process. Image sequence enhancement system and method – US Patent 7181081 [12] Some of the works being colorized by Legend are films that have fallen into the public domain and are now copyrighted only in their colorized form in the United States, while their original copyright on the black and white version is still in force. Other movies in the Legend Films library are titles color produced in revenue sharing partnerships with the original copyright holder. Legend has also colorized films owned by 20th Century Fox including four box sets of Shirley Temple films. Temple later partnered with the company to restore and colorize films in her private library. Jane Russell also collaborated with the company on a colorized version of her film debut, The Outlaw, and Ray Harryhausen, who collaborated with the company to colorize some of his own films (which he had originally wanted to shoot in color) as well as two of his personal favorites, She and Things to Come. The company also colorized the Ray Harryhausen film, 20 Million Miles To Earth for Sony Pictures Entertainment. In less than three years, Legend Films has restored and colorized over 100 feature films in high definition or film resolution.

Perhaps the company is best known for their cult film series, originally sub-titled Off Color Films. The company released three films under the Off Color Films banner: Reefer Madness, Night of the Living Dead, and Carnival of Souls. In 2005, the series became known only as Legend's cult film series. While House on Haunted Hill and Plan 9 from Outer Space have an Off Color Films logo on their back covers, the DVDs themselves did not have the logo animation prefacing the menu. Starting with The Little Shop of Horrors, all references to Off Color Films were removed, and the separate website for Legend's cult titles became non-operational. Legend continues to release titles in their cult films series without the Off Color Films banner. The discs in the series include audio commentary by comedian Michael J. Nelson as a primary special feature.

In 2006, Nelson was appointed Chief Content Producer. He will be responsible for building and leading the company's creative content, providing on-going commentaries and developing other premium web-based programming. "Mike Nelson is an outstanding addition to Legend Films," said David G. Martin, CEO of Legend Films. "His experience, vision and skills will be an important asset to the company as we continue to build our entertainment library."^[1] One of the projects that Nelson and Legend Films put together was RiffTrax, a website offering the purchase of downloadable audio commentaries. The first commentary made available through the service was for Road House.^[2] Legend Films has also released a colorized Three Stooges DVD which includes wraparound introductions by Mike and fellow Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast members Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, as The Film Crew.

Currently, Legend Films is releasing about two films a month. President Barry Sandrew hopes to increase the output to another film per month in the next year. But while the company has plenty of films to colorize, he insists there are some black and white films that should stay that way. "I certainly would not colorize films like Citizen Kane and others that were intentionally shot in black-and-white. But where budgetary or technical constraints prevented the use of color film, we can now show everyone how these movies were truly meant to be."^[3] "There are some films I would say no to colorizing. Unless the original creative people participated in the color design."^[4]