Jamie Graham of Total Film spoke with director Ridley Scott about his film, Napoleon, which is due out in November:
“I’m working on it. It was four [hours] 10 [minutes] this morning,” Scott tells us in the new issue, which hits newsstands on Thursday, October 12. “And so what will happen is, we’ll screen [the theatrical cut] first with Sony, and then it has its run, and then the perfect thing is that [the director’s cut] goes to streaming, and we have four hours 10 minutes.”
Outside of The Synder Cut, which did feel like the start of some new type of cinematic movement in a weird way, we haven’t seen too much of this — that is, a director giving the studio what it wants, but also leveraging the streaming services to get what they want in terms of final cut. Obviously, “Director’s Cuts” are nothing new, but with streaming, it feels like we can basically get this for every movie now. We won’t because there are still costs associated with doing a director’s cut versus a theatrical cut, but for the biggest filmmakers, like Ridley Scott, this seems likely to become the norm. Or “the perfect thing” as he puts it.
Napoleon, happens to be an Apple TV+ film, as Benjamin Mayo notes:
Presumably, Apple TV+ will stream both the theatrical cut and the director’s cut, allowing viewers to choose how long they want to be immersed in the world of Napoleon Bonaparte. This would be the first time Apple TV+ service has offered multiple versions of the same title on its platform.
As someone who has not one, not two, but three versions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD, my wallet salutes this change. As does my shelf space.
It sounds as if Scott’s streaming cut of Napoleon will be an hour and thirty two minutes longer than the theatrical version. That’s a lot of movie — in fact, that’s the length of many entire films (and should be for many more). And so I’ll just preemptively renew my call to have more fun with the formats for pieces of media that are this long. At the very least, more director’s commentary please!