Currently available across Digital HD, DVD and Blu-ray, Marvel’s Black Panther reached home video with a slew of extras and bonus features in tow. However, it looks like the 4-hour director’s cut of Marvel’s Black Panther won’t see the light of day. When Black Panther hit theaters, its runtime had been trimmed down to 2 hours and 14 minutes.
Given the massive success of Black Panther, many fans were keen on a director’s cut. It seemed like the release of a director’s cut was almost inevitable. There was even a rumour that this extended cut would be part of the home video release, however, nothing materialised.
And it looks like all hopes for the director’s cut are diminished. In an interview with Screen Rant, Black Panther producer Nate Moore killed any hopes of a director’s cut ever releasing. He also discussed how an extended cut simply wouldn’t be feasible considering all the effort that will need to go into making it presentable.
Yeah, Ryan’s director’s cut was long. It was interesting – even in the scriptwriting process, we knew that the piece of material that we shot had some scenes that wouldn’t make it into the final cut just because of the ambition of the story that Ryan wanted to tell. So the four-hour cut was literally everything in the film that was shot assembled in a way that obviously had the bones of the final film but had some additional things, some of which are in the DVD extras that people can explore.
I don’t think, ultimately, we would do an extended cut because a lot of times what happens with those early cuts is you don’t finish the visual effects, you don’t finish the sound, so there is no pristine four-hour cut that ever existed quite frankly. Even the score that had been temped in by Ludwig, who started very early on – almost earlier than we’d ever started a composer before – it was his music but not his final version of the music, so all of that stuff exists in a very imperfect state.
In its earliest state, Black Panther seemingly neared the four-hour mark, though it lacked the visual effects and soundtrack that were added in post-production. And these very visual effects and soundtrack were pivotal to Black Panther‘s success. Watching the four-hour director’s cut without these effects and soundtrack would definitely take away from the overall viewing experience.
Moore also talks about dealing with large, overlapping storylines across multiple films at once. He explains that certain creative concessions have to be made. Black Panther was first introduced in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War before appearing in Black Panther. He then appeared in Avengers: Infinity War just two months after Black Panther came out.
The other truth about how we make films here which I think is smart is if there are ideas or scenes or notions that could work in other films that maybe were in this cut, what we want to do is save them for a rainy day because you never know when a great scene or a great idea can be used in another film. So sometimes there are things we’ll never show audiences because we know we can repurpose them in another film.
Fans will never see the director’s cut, however, some of those omitted scenes and plot lines might find new life elsewhere in the MCU.
Source: Screen Rant
