Over
the last six months or so, there has been some controversy about the North American
cut of Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi film Snowpiercer, which stars Chris Evans, Tilda
Swinton, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris, Alison Pill, Ewen Bremner, Octavia
Spencer, Kang-ho Song, and Ko Asung.
The
controversy has been about the 20 minute cut that The Weinstein Company wants
to make in order to make Snowpiercer more attractive and more rentable in the
US market.
So
far Bong’s response has gone from calm to furious, depending on how far the
rabbit hole his he with the cuts.
In a
recent interview with Twitch, Bong explained where he and THC are in the cutting
progress:
“I’d
like to ask you about TWC and what’s going on regarding recutting the film.
Bong
Joon-ho – It’s still going on. Some aspects are a little bit exaggerated. Some
people misunderstood that there already exists a North American version with 20
minutes cut out. But that kind of version doesn’t exist. Officially the
negotiation is still going on, and I’m trying my best to keep my own version
and also the CJ people (the Korean investors/distributors) are trying to
confirm the release date, the marketing plan and many other things they are
still negotiating and the funny thing is once there did exist a 20-minute
cut-out version, a Weinstein version of Snowpiercer, they had a screening of
that version in New Jersey in July. Then CJ did another test screening of my
original version in LA with a normal American audience, and with my version the
response was much higher than the scores from the Weinstein version.
So
there was already a TWC version back in July?
Yes,
for test screenings. So we already have one fixed American version with 20
minutes cut out but that’s not the final version, we are still going through
the process.”
Bong
also says that the cuts are to give the film “a more speedy tempo”, which goes
with what we heard when the controversy first showed its head, that the cuts “would
make the film seem more like an action movie.”
Let’s
hope that in the midst of all this the story and quality of the movie doesn’t
get lost.
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