Vivian Kubrick Says ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Was “Picture Locked” Before Her Father’s Death: No Missing Scenes

There’s been this never-ending debate about whether “Eyes Wide Shut” was actually the true version Stanley Kubrick intended for release. Warner Bros. maintains that, despite minor tweaking, not a single frame was removed from Kubrick’s film — and that’s despite some stating otherwise.

A few months ago, Kubrick protégé Todd Field (via IndieWire), who was on the set of “Eyes Wide Shut” and took part in some of the post-production work with Kubrick, amped up the theories, stating that had the legendary filmmaker lived, we might have had a very different version of the film released in theaters: “What we have is Stanley’s first cut. He died six days after screening that cut for Tom, Nic, [and Warner Bros. chiefs] Bob [Daly] and Terry [Semel].”

When asked about the cut that was released in theaters — and whether it was the one Kubrick intended to be seen — “Eyes Wide Shut” star Nicole Kidman didn’t even hesitate in stating that it was the legendary filmmaker’s final version.

Then you have Roger Avary, who told Joe Rogan’s podcast that his sources had told him that Warner Bros. interfered with Kubrick’s original cut of the film, which only fueled the conspiracy theories.

So, the theories are really all over the place, which has now led to Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian Kubrick, directly addressing, via social media, the popular conspiracy theory that roughly 20 minutes of “Eyes Wide Shut” were removed after her father’s death. She says she never heard of such a cut.

According to Vivian, the film had already reached picture lock when Kubrick died on March 7, 1999, with only elements of the final sound mix and music still being completed, and that the only alteration she remembers hearing about concerned the orgy sequence. As she puts it, she “never heard that shots or entire scenes had been removed” and has “never encountered evidence” that a 20-minute-longer version existed.

Vivian also explains why surviving evidence of such a version would be difficult to find. “Eyes Wide Shut” was edited on Avid using standard-definition transfers of the rushes, while the original unused material existed on physical 35mm rush prints and the camera negative. She says those outtakes were eventually destroyed, consistent with her father’s established practice of incinerating unused footage so studios could not later re-edit his films or create unauthorized alternate versions.

The official story goes that Kubrick completed a cut of “Eyes Wide Shut” and showed it to Warner Bros. executives and Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman on March 2, 1999. This is the “first cut” Field seems to be referring to. However, Warner Bros. claimed at the time that Kubrick considered this cut to have been delivered in its “final form.” Kubrick died just six days later.

For the U.S. release, Warner Bros. added digital figures in the orgy sequence to obscure explicit sexual activity so the film could obtain an R rating instead of NC-17. Those digital alterations were not created or approved by Kubrick.

At this stage, it’s impossible to know how Kubrick would have further edited the film. The cut we have is the first and only one he managed to deliver. Whether it was final or rough is anybody’s guess, but Field’s and Vivian’s recent assertions definitely muddy the waters a bit. The frustration of it all lies in the fact that we’ll never really know.