During the mid-1970s, Hardy made inquiries about the film, hoping to restore it to his original vision. Along with Lee and Shaffer, Hardy searched for his original cut, or raw footage. Both of these appeared to have been lost. Director Alex Cox said in his Moviedrome introduction in 1988 that the negative had "ended up in the pylons that support the M4 motorway." Hardy recalled that a copy of the film made prior to Deeley's cuts was sent to Roger Corman, who, it turned out, still had it, possibly the only existing print of Hardy's original cut.
The U.S. rights had been sold by Warner Bros. to a small firm called Abraxas, managed by film buff Stirling Smith and critic John Alan Simon. Stirling agreed to an American release of a reconstruction by Hardy based on the print kept by Roger Corman. Hardy restored the narrative structure, some of the erotic elements which had been excised, and a very brief pretitle segment of Howie on the mainland (appearing at a church with his fiancée).
Ron Weinberg, a once co-partner of Abraxas, sub-licensed the film from the firm along with Micheline Charest, and began screening Hardy's reconstructed cut in Jackson, Missouri and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, via the newly-formed Hemisphere Pictures in November 1977. Despite the filmmakers' concern that Southern audiences may be offended by the film, it was well-received, particularly by local religious leaders. In December 1977, Weinberg and Charest screened the film under their new enterprise, Summerisle Films, in New Orleans, where it was also well-received. In January 1979, the film began showing at San Francisco's Castro Theatre, followed by a four month-long run at the city's Lumiere Theatre.
The original 99-minute version was available in the United States on VHS home video from Media Home Entertainment (and later Magnum) during the 1980s and 1990s. This video includes additional early scenes set inside Howie's police station, which Hardy had left out of the 1979 restoration. In 2001, a remaster of the 88-minute cut was released on VHS, labelled as the "Theatrical Version".
In 2001, the film's new world rights owners, Canal+, tried to release the full-length film. Corman's copy had been lost, but a telecine transfer to 1-inch videotape existed. Missing elements were combined with film elements from the previous versions (in particular, additional scenes of Howie on the mainland were restored, showing him to be the object of gossip at his police station, establishing his devout religiosity). The extended DVD cut was released by Canal+ (Anchor Bay Entertainment handling US DVD distribution) in this 99-minute hybrid, considered the longest and closest version to Hardy's original 100-odd minute version. A two-disc limited edition set was sold with the shortened theatrical release, the new extended version and a documentary, The Wicker Man Enigma.
In 2005, Inside the Wicker Man author Allan Brown revealed he had discovered stills taken on the set showing sequences from the script that had never been seen; it had never been certain that the scenes had been filmed. They include scenes where Howie closes a mainland pub open after hours, encounters a prostitute, has a massage from Willow McGregor, and sees a brutal confrontation between Oak and a villager in The Green Man, which were featured in a revised edition of Inside the Wicker Man. Anchor Bay released a limited-edition wooden box of The Wicker Man. About 50,000 two-disc sets were made, of which 20 were signed by Lee and Woodward, Shaffer, Snell, and Hardy. In March 2002, Lee discussed the lost original cut, "I still believe it exists somewhere, in cans with no name. I still believe that. But nobody's ever seen it since, so we couldn't re-cut it, re-edit it, which was what I wanted to do. It would have been ten times as good".
StudioCanal, the European distributors of the film, began a Facebook campaign in 2013 to find missing material, which culminated in the discovery of a 92-minute 35 mm print at the Harvard Film Archive. This print had previously been known as the "Middle Version" and was itself assembled from a 35 mm print of the original edit Robin Hardy. Hardy now believed that his original edit will probably never be found, saying, "Sadly, it seems as though this has been lost forever. However, I am delighted that a 1979 Abraxas print has been found as I also put together this cut myself, and it crucially restores the story order to that which I had originally intended."
Hardy reported in July 2013 that Studiocanal intended to restore and release the most complete version possible of the film. Rialto Pictures announced that it was to release the new digital restoration in North American cinemas on 27 September 2013. This new version was also released on DVD on 13 October 2013. It is 91 minutes long, shorter than the director's cut but longer than the theatrical cut, and is known as The Wicker Man: The Final Cut.
The Final Cut (UK) Blu-ray (2013) features short documentaries "Burnt Offering: The Cult of the Wicker Man", "Worshipping the Wicker Man", "The Music of the Wicker Man", interviews with director Robin Hardy and actor Christopher Lee, a restoration comparison, and the theatrical trailer. The second disc features both the UK 87-minute theatrical cut and the 95-minute 2013 director's cut, along with an audio commentary on the director's cut and a making-of for the commentary. The third disc is the soundtrack to the film.
In 2023, for the 50th anniversary of the film's release, StudioCanal announced 4K resolution restoration of existing footage, and remastering of the existing three cuts. On 21 June, the 4K restoration of The Final Cut was screened in cinemas across the UK along with a Q&A filmed in London, hosted by Edith Bowman with guests including Britt Ekland, and Robin Hardy's sons Justin and Dominic promoting their Wickermania! documentary. On 24 June, the Barbican Centre held "Musics from Summerisle", a live performance celebration of the anniversary.
On 25 September 2023, StudioCanal released a 4K UHD Blu-ray in the United Kingdom, available in limited edition digipak and steelbook editions, as well as a standard packaging edition. In the United States, a 4K UHD Blu-ray was released the following month via Lionsgate in steelbook packaging, sold exclusively at Best Buy.
