Will We Ever See The Director's Cut Of EVENT HORIZON?
Before he was bringing the Umbrella Corporation and zombies to life on the big screen for Resident Evil, director Paul W.S. Anderson directed a film that still chills us. Event Horizon, the film was one of the stand out features of 1997 and has various rumors sourrunding its production. One such rumor has to do with the studio (Paramount) butchering the film in the editing room and there being some pretty graphic scenes dismissed from the final release.
Over the years this rumor turned to fact (confirmed by Paul W.S. Anderson in various interviews) and fans were left wanting this “Director’s Cut”. Footage has been found a few times but nothing really substantial to the overall film, and nothing that would dub it the infamous “Director’s Cut”, yet the search continued.
A few pieces of film were found from these cuts on VHS. The footage could not be restored and what clips they could restore, went into a special edition double disc DVD set a few years back. But still…No Director’s Cut.
Fast forward to today and it looks like our hopes of ever seeing that lost footage are lost.
"There are bits and pieces of Event Horizon that turn up every so often; a little bit on VHS here or there," Anderson shared with CinemaBlend. "I think, unfortunately, the bulk of what was taken out of the movie has been lost. I think the only way to truly recreate the lost cut of Event Horizon, which was the original cut I presented to the studio that they were so horrified by because it was pretty extreme, I think the only way to recreate that is, actually, to shoot new material. But who knows, in the world of the Snyder Cut of Justice League? C’mon Paramount Pictures, all I need is a bit of money, and I can go and shoot all of that stuff with Joely Richardson, and Lawrence Fishburne, and Jason Isaacs. A little bit of de-aging, and we can just go shoot the whole thing again."
Anderson also revealed that his vision for the film was far to twisted and brutal for Paramount to handle.
When we delivered the first cut to Paramount, they were just horrified by the movie," the filmmaker admitted. "It was much darker and scarier than they ever thought it was going to be. An executive actually said to me, ‘We’re the studio that makes Star Trek,’ as if somehow I was like besmirching Star Trek as well. It wasn’t bad enough that I had made this horrible movie. So the movie ended up being trimmed a lot, and unfortunately, it was before DVD really popularized deleted scenes and things like that so there was no incentive for studios to keep that material.”
Scream Factory is actively trying to find lost footage for an upcoming special release of the film and we are also told an Event Horizon TV Series is in the works.
