Enlarge / Writer-director Joshua Newton and actor Roy Scheider. (credit: Tana Lee Alves / Contributor | WireImage)
This September, British filmmaker Joshua Newton prepared to rerelease his 2009 film Beautiful Blue Eyes. The 2022 premiere was important to Newton, as he’d waited more than a decade to finally share with the world a version of the movie that was previously lost.
Roy Scheider starred in Newton’s movie, and it ended up being his final role. Scheider—who is best known for playing the beloved Jaws police chief who says, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”—portrayed a New York cop who reunites with his estranged son and tracks down the Nazi responsible for murdering his family members during the Holocaust. Because a camera malfunctioned and damaged some of Newton’s footage and Scheider died while filming, Newton previously thought he’d lost the edit he liked best. But then more than a decade passed, and Newton told Rolling Stone that AI technology had finally advanced enough that the filmmaker could repair lost film frames.
Excited to put this cut of his thriller in front of audiences, Newton prepared to promote the rerelease on Facebook. But in the days leading up to the premiere, Newton told Rolling Stone that he received an email informing him that in a rare turn of events, “Facebook had banned the filmmakers from promoting or advertising” the movie.
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