H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (Hines film) added scenes, re-edits, and re-tooled special effects; the director says this is the definitive version. "The Classic War of the Worlds" replaces the 3 hour rough cut version, "H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds", that was widely distributed and is now discontinued. In 2012 a re-imagined, re-edited, and re-thought version, with new material added, was released under the title War of the Worlds – The True Story; this new version, again directed by Timothy Hines, is presented as a faux-documentary. It revisits Wells' novel, portraying its events as historical by way of the documented recollections of a survivor of
The War of the Worlds (radio drama) into it. A study by the Radio Project discovered that fewer than one third of frightened listeners understood the invaders to be aliens; most thought that they were listening to reports of a German invasion or of a natural catastrophe. "People were on edge", wrote Welles biographer Frank Brady. "For the entire month prior to 'The War of the Worlds', radio had kept the American public alert to the ominous happenings throughout the world. The Munich crisis was at its height... For the first time in history, the public could tune into their radios every night and hear, boot by