AND… CUT!

The home media boom means a film's theatrical version isn't necessarily its last. Anton van Beek takes a look at the intriguing, inspiring –and sometimes irritating – world of 'Director's Cuts'

- Anton van Beek

Alexander

In the wake of Gladiator, Hollywood studios were quick to greenlight any project that might deliver the same epic sword-and-sandals magic, which helps explain why controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone was given over $150m to create Alexander.

A sweeping biopic, it cast Colin Farrell as the legendary Macedonian king, alongside an eclectic cast including Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Val Kilmer and Brian Blessed.

Stone's theatrical cut ran at an impressively lengthy 175 minutes, eight minutes longer than the equally bloated historical epic Troy that had hit cinemas six months earlier. Critical response was lukewarm, and audiences largely stayed away, giving Alexander 'flop' status.

Stone, however, had long been bitten by the director's cut bug (having previously retooled the likes of Any Given Sunday, Nixon and JFK for home media) and did the same for the film's 2005 'Director's Cut' DVD, albeit adding and removing footage to arrive at a leaner 163-minute running time.

Two years later he was back at it again, producing Alexander: Revisited for a subsequent disc release. This found Stone going for an all-out epic feel, resulting in a 214-minute movie with an intermission and a drastically re-edited structure.

But was he finished? No. Despite this 2007 take being dubbed the 'final cut', he returned once more in 2012 for an Ultimate Cut that trimmed the running time down to 207 minutes. It's this version that, presumably, is Stone's favourite – pick it up on US Blu-ray.

I Am Legend