Drew Struzan recently announced his retirement, much to the sadness of geeks everywhere. His hand-painted movie posters are an integral part of ’80s geekdom, with a photorealistic yet also painterly style that blurs the line between marketing materials and art. There are a lot of Struzan posters up on a lot of walls, and even if you don’t know the name, you know the art style.
So his retirement, while richly deserved and going out on top, was a sad moment.
Well, guess what? He’s back and he’s making even more movie posters.
Struzan had been working with a poster company called Mondo. Mondo is associated with the Alamo Drafthouse and puts out high quality poster reprints and new posters for old movies. He’d graciously allowed Mondo to reprint some of his work for their posters…and apparently has been so impressed with what he’s seen he’s decided to pick up his brush and start painting posters again, this time for Mondo’s licenses.
To give you an idea of what Struzan could be working on, Mondo has the rights to make posters based on Studio Ghibli, Jurassic Park, and Lord of the frickin’ Rings.
Mondo will not just accept your credit card and telling them “Send me everything he paints, dammit!”, since I already tried that. Keep an eye out on their site.
image courtesy LucasFilm