Before Star Wars, before American Graffiti, there was THX 1138, the first film from future sci-fi groundbreaker and digital pioneer George Lucas and also the first film to emerge from Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios. A dark, brooding look at a world overrun by tyranny and technology, the film has long been hard to see outside of very limited theatrical revival screenings and dreadful video versions of very poor quality.

But on September 14th, just a week after the film gets a brief theatrical release in 20 cities on September 10th (and a week before the first-ever DVD release of another Lucas sci-fi trilogy), comes THX 1138 - The Director's Cut. Warner Home Video will release the cult classic in a new two-disc set, featuring a digitally enhanced and restored version of the film, which will include never-before-seen deleted scenes and new CGI-created backgrounds courtesy of Lucas's revisionist history factory known as ILM.

In addition to a THX-certified anamorphic widescreen transfer of the film and a remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track, supplements on the DVD will include an audio commentary by Lucas and sound designer Walter Murch, an additional "Theatre of Noise" audio track with the isolated score, a new 60-minute documentary by Gary Leva, "A Legacy of Filmmakers: The Early Years of American Zoetrope" which chronicles the Coppola mini-studio, the "Artifact of the Future" 30-minute making-of documentary, Lucas' original USC short film "Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB" upon which the film was based, a still gallery and theatrical trailers. The two-disc set will retail for $26.95.