Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’s 4-hour director’s cut is probably coming next year. The latest film to land on Oscar-winning director Quentin Tarantino’s extensive cinematic resume was one of the biggest hits of the past year.
Now with Oscar season just around the corner, Tarantino’s love letter to Hollywood is one of a handful of films expected to claim several nominations. Whether or not those nominations will turn into awards remains to be seen, but unlike the film’s competition, Once Upon A Time's theatrical cut was not the film's complete version. As anyone who’s seen the film will know, there’s nothing particularly short about it. Clocking in at 161 minutes, Tarantino’s ninth feature film (assuming one counts Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2 as a single film) was re-released late last year with 10 minutes of additional footage. Fans were only too eager to head back to theaters for more, and this being a Tarantino film, it’s never a surprise to hear from the director himself that he’s scheming on some new variation or potential sequel to his work.
Unfortunately for the Tarantino die-hards, a sequel to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is not currently in the works. There is, however, a definite possibility of an extended cut of the film arriving at some point. Tarantino films have never gained a reputation for being brief affairs, and the creative mind of the filmmaker never seems to stop whenever it comes time to building a universe and the stories within it. As a result, fans of Once Upon A Time are now being teased with a whopping 4-hour cut of the hit film. During a recent interview with Collider, Tarantino spoke about the difficulties he faced in taming the original cut of the film down to an acceptable run time. Said the acclaimed filmmaker:
“It’s all good. It’s all great. I don’t know if an audience would sit for it, but I love it. So we showed it to Tom Rothman and it was like, ‘Ok, here this all is. We know that this is a movie, but maybe you can help us out because we like everything.”
At this point, Brad Pitt, who was also in attendance, prodded Tarantino with the single issue bound to be on every Once Upon A Time fan’s mind, "The real question is are we going to get to see this one way or another?" To which Tarantino replied: "Hey look, it’s all good so once this whole thing is said and done, maybe in a year’s time, we probably will."
On the surface at least, it looks as though Tarantino is committed to releasing the much lengthier cut. What will likely play a major factor in the release of the film, however, is how well Once Upon A Time performs during awards season. Winning several awards will make it clear to Tarantino and Sony that there is sure to be a strong demand to see more. Fans who’ve followed Tarantino over the course of his acclaimed career will be more than a little familiar with promises of longer or different cuts of his films, many of which never materialized. Perhaps one of the most long-awaited of these was the meshing of Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2 together into one film. After seven years, the film was finally released – but is currently only available to audiences at Tarantino’s Los Angeles movie theater, The New Beverly.
With his lengthy reputation for making promises of movies and not always delivering, Tarantino fans are accustomed to some degree of frustration. And while there have been far more reasons to celebrate the filmmaker’s career than to feel disappointed, if a 4-hour cut of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood exists, it’s hard to imagine any valid reason for not releasing it – especially after teasing it in this manner.
Source: Collider