How many hours of film footage were restored for They Shall Not Grow Old? The answer is 100 hours.
Peter Jackson’s 2018 documentary used archival First World War footage supplied by the Imperial War Museum. Jackson and his team reviewed 100 hours of original film, much of it previously unseen, and visually restored all of the footage sent to them. The work included cleaning and repairing the images before applying colourisation, modern framing, and other techniques.
The film was designed to make the war feel immediate rather than distant. Jackson added sound effects, music, and dialogue edited from interviews with British veterans, transforming silent black-and-white film into an immersive portrait of frontline life. The interviews came from roughly 200 veterans and totalled about 600 hours.
A common mix-up is confusing the 100 hours of film with the 600 hours of veteran interviews. The finished theatrical film runs about 99 minutes, while an extended version runs about 129 minutes.