The Flash: Four-Hour Director's Cut Exists, But We're Unlikely to See It

Even as TV producers try to make episodes shorter and reduce the total screen time for each show, feature films keep getting longer and longer, requiring more and more concentration, dedication and time from viewers.

DC Extended Universe movies are no exception in this regard.

Not long ago, yielding to incessant fan requests, HBO Max released the director's cut of Zack Snyder's Justice League, which clocked in at a whopping four hours. The latest entry in the DCEU, The Flash, has a runtime of 2.5 hours, and there are rumours that the director's cut is an hour and a half longer than that. However, even the director himself, Andrés Muschietti, was recently quoted as saying that the theatrical release version is the best, so we probably won't be seeing the Muschietti cut anytime soon.

Andy Muschietti, who previously helmed the production of such horror classics as Mama and It Chapters One and Two, The Flash featured so many intertwining plotlines that making it was a great thrill for both himself and the actors and resulted in an even greater level of detail being added to the movie.

'You get excited, and you start improvising with actors, and suddenly you have a scene that has doubled the duration of the script,' he said.

He explained that one problem with having lots of intertwining story arcs is that early on, it can create chaos on set. It's only after you get into the swing of things that working on complex plots like that can become great fun. Another drawback is the amount of material that has to be sorted out to leave only the bits that help drive the overall narrative.

'Many things are very cool things, but they somehow step on the propulsion, on the pacing of the movie, which is something that you always have to have in mind,' the director added.

In the end, he said, the crew had five hours of footage, which they cut down to four hours. And after that, another hour and a half was left on the cutting room's floor before the film was deemed good enough for a theatrical release.

As for the release of the four-hour director's cut, Muschietti replied, ‘Maybe.’ Nevertheless, he is ‘definitely happier with this version than the four-hour version.’

The fate of the director's cut, as per usual, will depend on how well The Flash does at the box office and on fan interest in seeing the longer version. The film already features an extremely complex story with crazy plot twists predicated on Ezra Miller's Barry Allen time travelling and creating multiple alternate realities with different versions of the well-known superheroes. Another hour and a half of the same may prove too much, even for die-hard fans.

Source: Vanity Fair.