Zack Snyder was in post-production on the superhero team-up film JUSTICE LEAGUE when a family tragedy forced him to leave the project, and Warner Bros. brought on Joss Whedon to not just finish the film but also reshape the story and change the tone, resulting in a film that Snyder has said only retains 20% of the vision he had for it. Now Snyder is getting the chance to bring his version of JUSTICE LEAGUE to HBO Max next year, and while film fans online are either celebrating, bemoaning, or just shrugging over that fact, it's giving other filmmakers hope that they might be able to put different cuts of their movies out into the world as well.
For example, David Ayer has said that being able to release a director's cut of SUICIDE SQUAD would be "incredibly cathartic". And Paul Feig, director of the divisive GHOSTBUSTERS remake (a.k.a. GHOSTBUSTERS: ANSWER THE CALL), has said there's a 3.5 hour cut of the film that he would be "happy to share".
GHOSTBUSTERS: ANSWER THE CALL was released to theatres with a running time of 116 minutes, then a 133 minute extended cut was released on Blu-ray. (You can pick up a copy HERE.)
Feig told Collider,
The editor’s first cut was 4 hours and 15 minutes, and I trimmed that down to a slim 3 and a half hours. We generate a lot of stuff and I always wanna have all the underpinnings of a big, emotional story, and because of that it just added a lot of extra scenes that as you’re going through, you know you have to make a lot of choices because I knew I had to bring this down under two hours. You just start weeding and saying, ‘What do people want to delve deeper into and what do we wanna just kind of skirt through and get to the fun parts?’"
I had some issues with Feig's GHOSTBUSTERS, but enjoyed the movie overall. Still, I'm not exactly clamoring for more. I haven't watched the movie since seeing it at the theatre opening weekend, four years ago. But if Feig wants to share an epic, 3.5 hour cut, and if there are fans out there who would like to see it, I say go ahead and drop it onto a streaming service.
Feig's team of Ghostbusters were played by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. The story Feig crafted with Katie Dippold:
Dead criminals from all eras of New York’s underbelly past have returned to roost among the living in Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot. Pilgrims, old-timey sailors, Revolutionary War spirits, and even a couple of zoot-suited gangsters are ready to take on four formidable female busters looking to rid the city of its phantasmic filth.
The film also stars Chris Hemsworth, Neil Casey, Andy Garcia, Michael K. Williams, Matt Walsh, Pat Kiernan, Cecily Strong, and Charles Dance, with cameos by Ozzy Osbourne and original GHOSTBUSTERS stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and Sigourney Weaver.