THE FLASH Director Reveals Original Cut of The Film Was Four Hours Long
The Flash was recently screened for an audience for the first time last week at CinemaCon, and I was there to witness the magic! I’m sure you saw all of the hype for the movie, and I will say it again… the hype is real! DC fans are going to be blown away by this movie. You can check out our spoiler-free reaction to the movie here.
I thought the cut we saw was great, but of course, I’d be interested in seeing what was cut from the film because it turns out the original cut was over four hours long! Director Andy Muschietti shared this little detail himself in a Q&A after the screening, and when he was asked about elements that he was forced to cut from the movie, he said:
"Well, if you see the four-hour version of this movie, which was my first assembly, you will see what I left out. I'm definitely more happy with this version than the four-hour version. Just like it's something that you get excited and you start improvising with actors and suddenly you have a scene that has doubled the duration that was timed when they were timing the script. But it happens all the time. IT was also three hours and a half, and IT: Chapter Two was like five hours. Then you have to face the edit and say, 'Okay. We need to remove one hour and a half of this movie, and how it's going to happen?' It's always at the end it's fun. At the end of six months, it's fun. At the beginning, it's just chaos and whatever you start doing is wrong seen in hindsight. Because it's trial and error and you try a lot of things."
It’s just the process of the filmmaker to whittle down the film in the editing room to the perfect shape that it needs to be. Muschietti delivers one of the best DC films that has been made and regardless of the length, audiences are going to enjoy the hell out of it. There’s so much I want to say! There is some pretty awesome mind-blowing stuff included in the movie that I was not expecting.
The director went on to say that the theatrical version of the movie that will be released remains the "best version of the movie," but he also went on to tease "interesting" deleted scenes, saying:
"Many things are very cool things, but they somehow step on the propulsion, on the pacing of the movie, which is something that you always have to in mind. Decisions that you have to make."
When talking about those scenes, producer Barbara Muschietti noted, "They've been shot some of them, and maybe would see the light of day someday.” So, that’s kind of cool!
"Worlds collide in The Flash when Barry uses his superpowers to travel back in time in order to change the events of the past. But when his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, Barry becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned, threatening annihilation, and there are no Super Heroes to turn to. That is, unless Barry can coax a very different Batman out of retirement and rescue an imprisoned Kryptonian... albeit not the one he's looking for. Ultimately, to save the world that he is in and return to the future that he knows, Barry's only hope is to race for his life. But will making the ultimate sacrifice be enough to reset the universe?"
The Flash will be released on June 23rd, 2023.