Zack Snyder Gives Details on R-Rated BATMAN V SUPERMAN Ultimate Cut
About a week ago, we learned that Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. intended to release an R-rated Ultimate Cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on Blu-ray and DVD. Now Snyder has revealed some details about that cut of the movie to EW in a new interview:
While he wouldn't say exactly how much longer the Ultimate Cut will be, he did comment on the length of the theatrical cut:
“We were just like, ‘Okay, look. We’re not making a three-hour movie. I mean, even I didn’t want to make a three-hour movie,” Snyder says. “I drove the cuts probably harder than anyone. The studio, they were willing to let the movie indulge pretty hard. But I felt like it’s at a manageable two-and-a-half hours. Let’s also not forget the credits are super long, the end credits. So the movie’s closer to two hours and 22 minutes.”
This morning, we wrote about how Jena Malone's scene(s) have been cut out of the movie, but those will appear on the Ultimate Cut. Even now, though, Snyder won't reveal what character she's playing:
“I think we should keep it private, but it’s nothing that’s been talked about,” Snyder says. “She’s definitely not Robin or Batgirl. I’m happy to say that.”
EW hints that other heroes may have expanded roles in the Ultimate Cut, so we can probably expect to see a bit more of people like Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller than what will appear theatrically:
Some of what’s being added to the “Ultimate Edition” counts as a spoiler, so we won’t reveal all of the extra material. Suffice to say, some minor characters in the theatrical cut are given expanded storylines. And a few other actors will join Malone in being rescued from the cutting room floor.
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“And then there’s just a lot of these Easter Eggs in the Director’s Cut that I think are gonna be fun for everyone.” Some of the additions are aimed at teasing future movies, like 2017’s Justice League film, which Snyder begins shooting in April. “There’s one giant one that I won’t tell you about yet that speaks to what’s gonna go on in the greater Justice League universe,” he says.
The new cut of the movie received the R-rating for the relatively vague reason of "for sequences of violence," but producer Charles Roven says that it's not going to be a gorefest or anything like that:
“There’s not a lot of blood in our movies,” he says. “The ratings board also judges their PG-13 and R ratings by what they consider to be a level of intensity and how much that intensity goes throughout the entire movie. There are some pretty intense scenes in Batman v Superman, and if they went on longer and had that same level of intensity, that might cause the ratings board to shift their rating.”
So all of the fan speculation about Joker brutally murdering Robin or paralyzing Barbara Gordon on screen in the Ultimate Cut seems like it might be slightly off the mark — or if those scenes are present, they probably won't be much different than what we see in the normal cut this month. You can read more about it over at EW.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice arrives in theaters on March 25.