ATTN: Quentin Tarantino fans — over a month after “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” hit theaters, this unified and extended 275-minute cut is now setting its sights on physical media.
Lionsgate Creative Ad Senior VP Aaron Gershman is telling the Boutique Talk podcast that there will be a packaged release of “The Whole Bloody Affair” coming out this year. A simple retail version will be available to purchase, but there will also be a “very deluxe, elaborate box set with tons of extras.” The hope is to have this near–five-hour version on a single 4K disc without sacrificing any image quality.
This release will give further credence to Tarantino’s claim that both “Kill Bill” installments count as a single movie, which is why he says he has directed only nine films in his career, with one final film left to make before he retires — or so he claims.
The story goes that “Kill Bill” was split into two parts primarily due to runtime and narrative reasons. When Tarantino completed his original cut, the movie was over four hours, which he and producer Harvey Weinstein agreed was too long for a single theatrical release. The first chapter hit theaters in fall 2003, followed by the second in spring 2004.
The NYT went so far as to suggest in its obituary headline that the “Coens may be lost without him,” and Ethan's own words back that up: if you love their movies, he said, "a lot of it is him — more than people know."