Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World came out in 1963 and has quite a version history as our extensive comparison between the theatrical cut and the so-called Special Edition reveals.

While a so-called Preview Version with a length of 210 minutes resulted from a 5-hour-long workprint, Kramer himself made further cuts for its theatrical release (192 minutes). But that still wasn't enough for United Artists because they intended to show the movie in theaters as often as possible on one single day. As a result, the studio made further cuts on their own and the "final" Theatrical Version was only 154 minutes almost the only option to watch the movie, even these days.

Almost the only option because MGM and United Artists made the effort to edit a "Special Edition" in 1991. This Special Edition contains footage found in the archieves. Unfortunately, only 20 minutes of the footage could be reconstruced but not any missing minute (...)

This theatrical version was released on Blu-ray last year and that had fans fear that a relase of the Special Edition was not to be expected in the near future. Fortunately, that's not the case because Criterion has now announced a Blu-ray/DVD release for January 21st, 2014.

And this release will have another clou for film buffs:

New high-definition digital transfer of a 197-minute extended version of the film, reconstructed and restored by Robert A. Harris using visual and audio material from the longer original road-show version—including some scenes that have been returned to the film here for the first time—with 5.1 surround Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray.