A restored version of Martin Scorsese’s darkly comic fable will close the 12th Tribeca Film Festival on Apr 27 to mark the film’s 30th anniversary.

Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard star as a stand-up comedian and his sidekick who kidnap a talk show host and force him to give the comic a live slot on air.

Jerry Lewis and Diahnne Abbott round out the key cast. Paul D Zimmerman wrote the screenplay and Arnon Milchan produced.

“I was a big fan of the script and was very excited to do it with Marty and happy that we finally made it,” said Tribeca Film Festival co-founder De Niro. “The fact that it’s been restored (hard to believe that so many years have passed) is even all the better, and I can’t wait to see it on our closing night.”

“Robert De Niro and I were both drawn to Paul Zimmerman’s script for The King Of Comedy, which really captured the show business atmosphere and the desperate attachments that some of the people on the other side of the screen could form, the ones that in certain cases turned dangerous,” said Scorsese.

The film was restored in association with The Film Foundation, Regency Enterprises and Twentieth Century Fox.

The Tribeca Film Festival is set to run from Apr 17-28.

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