So, this is how it usually works with, many, DC movies. Their superhero movies gets released to middling reviews, fans are disappointed, then the filmmaker slyly reveals that there’s a longer cut that wasn’t meddled with studio intervention.
It happened with Zack Snyder’s “Justice League,” and “Batman v Superman,” David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad,” and Cathy Yan’s “Birds of Prey.” It’s happening again, this time with Andy Muschietti’s “The Flash.”
Muschietti revealed to Vanity Fair that “The Flash”, currently in theaters, originally had a runtime of around four hours before being trimmed down to approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes.
Muschietti claims he’s satisfied with the version shown in theaters —he has to say that— but wants the longer four-hour cut of “The Flash” released.
The extended cut went through multiple edits, initially reaching up to five hours, as Muschietti and the team experimented with different scenes, an assortment of cameos, and plot twists.
"You have to face the edit and say, ‘Okay, we need to remove one hour and a half of this movie. How’s it going to happen?’ At the end of six months, it’s fun. At the beginning, it’s just chaos, and whatever you start doing is wrong, seen in hindsight, because it’s trial and error. You try a lot of things.”
The end result was removing 90 minutes of footage. Cue a #ReleaseTheMuschiettiCut hashtag emerging, which, if it hasn’t happened already, should be starting up in a matter of hours or days.
Now we’re going to have months of fan petitions, which is probably what Muschietti intended by revealing the existence of this cut.
EDIT: Already happening.
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.