‘Project Hail Mary’ Directors Screened a Nearly Four-Hour Cut to Other Filmmakers and Were Told to Get it Way Shorter

by MarvelsGrantMan136

42 Comments

  1. >“This movie was massive. When we finally got the assembly cut down to under four hours long, we subjected some filmmaker friends of ours to a three hour and 45 minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing.”

    Virtually every movie like this has a four hour assembly cut. This isn’t fucking news.

  2. Hopefully that cut will be released at some point for fans to purchase as an alternative to the theatrical cut.

  3. MarvelsGrantMan136 on

    Chris Miller & Phil Lord:

    >“Our first official test screening went great, but we do a lot of earlier screenings for friends and family and other filmmakers and writers,” Miller explained. “This movie was massive. When we finally got the assembly cut down to under four hours long, we subjected some filmmaker friends of ours to a three hour and 45 minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing.”

    >Lord noted that the feedback the directing duo got was unanimous: “Get it way shorter.”

    >“You just don’t know how the scenes are going to land with an audience,” Lord said. “We thought everything was charming, but some of those charming things didn’t land. It made it really easy to get it down to three hours.”

    >“Then we had to slowly, slowly work our way down to 2.5 hours,” Miller added, which is around the final length of the movie’s theatrical cut.

  4. usuallysortadrunk on

    Any time this happens I always think it has n9thing to do with the quality of the movie only the length for screen times yadda yadda

  5. I want the scenes with them paving the Sahara to farm astrophage and nuking Antarctica to release methane into the atmosphere

  6. The movie really only reinforced my opinion that book adaptations need a 6-8 episode miniseries. Otherwise you can’t avoid speedrunning the plot.

  7. I was very sadly disappointed by the movie. They took an uplifting but still leaning on the serious notes story about how goodwill can overcome even the hardest challenges both as a species (impending doom) and as individuals (inability to understand each other). The movie was an uplifting and goofy story. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad movie and didn’t alter the story mich, but it altered the characters just enough to drop what made the book great.

  8. The filmmakers: We had an embarrassingly-lame 4 hour version at one point.

    Everyone here: Release the 4-hour cut!

  9. paultheschmoop on

    I thought the 3rd act felt a bit rushed and didn’t leave much room for a few moments that should have been super emotional to really linger, so….if the extra stuff is in there, by all means, make a director’s cut!

    Solid movie on the whole though

  10. Ya. For sure. Who wants to spend half there day staring at a screen…that’s not their phone?

  11. I’d assume a lot of the extra bits is them discussing and implementing the variety of different plans to create more astrophage

  12. Special screening of these longer cuts with an intermission can be really feasible now with the assigned seating.

  13. Why is Zack Snyder (the most overrated director of all time) allowed to make 3+ hour movies every single time (at least as far as directors cuts are concerned)?

    I don’t mind a 4+ hour movie if it has 4+ hours of story to tell, but a 4-hour Zack Snyder movie has approximately 35 minutes worth of story to tell.

  14. How is this a story? This is pretty standard practice during the editing process. Most assembly cuts are no where near final running time and getting input from others is pretty normal.

  15. MusclyArmPaperboy on

    I heard the longer version included a backstory for Grace with a love interest, but that was scrapped. It made more sense to make him a loner.

  16. CancelThis2077 on

    Honestly, it was feeling a little bit long in the last half-hour or so, like it didn’t know when to end so that might’ve been the right call.

  17. tiredofstanding on

    I love the book and love the movie. There’s parts in the book that I would have enjoyed being adapted. But with the way it was edited and the run time, I get it . Wouldn’t mind seeing a directors cut, just so it shows how far Eva went to for the project. But again, I fully understand why and how it could be “too much”.

  18. So as someone who has worked with Lord and Miller as an editor, I can almost guarantee you this cut was a fat cut with every one of their funny gags and alts and improv that they liked, which they fully intended to cut down, that they just wanted to get feedback on to see how and which gags played the best. Not to mention when you’re a director and you sign a deal with a studio, they have a stipulation on run time. There is no world in which the studio would’ve allowed a four hour cut. They would’ve contractually had a clause that kept it probably about two hours and 10 minutes or less. This was a rough cut.

    So this headline is positioning it like Lord and Miller wanted to deliver a four hour cut and were getting their heartbroken that their friends told them to cut it down, when that was 100% definitely not the case.

  19. A lot of movies start out this long. We’re usually better off with it getting edited versions. I remember some commentaries, the director always goes off and giggles to himself how much he loves some fucking actor and wishes he could add more screentime of them just being themselves. They really get carried away with the money and power they have that they lose sight of their vision.

    We got a longer cut of Napoleon and it was no Kingdom of Heaven.

  20. APartyInMyPants on

    Duh.

    I mean this is always how it is. The first cut is always insanely fat with scenes that are too bloated, and scenes that are unnecessary.

    The “director’s cut” doesn’t always mean it’s a superior version.

  21. Long_Philosophy1798 on

    it might be coming to Home Media they did the same thing with The Martain if i remember right

  22. To me it was the best movie this year, so what did release was good enough. It would be fun to go and watch a longer cut though at home. I don’t know anything about the book, but it sounds like based off the comments there were a lot of things cut out.

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