M. Night Shyamalan, the director of Glass, has revealed that the film’s first cut was more than three hours long.
A lot happens between a director shooting a film and the product arriving in cinemas, and this usually includes a lot of what was filmed lying on the cutting room floor, paving the way on many occasions for fascinating director’s cuts.
According to director M. Night Shyamalan, his latest film Glass – a sequel to Unbreakable and Split – has left plenty in the editing room too, telling Digital Spy that the film was once more than three hours long:
“The script was really long, it was almost 150 pages and the first cut of the movie was three hours and 20 minutes, it was really long. Then it started tightening [and] tightening until we got to the 2.08 that you can see.”
As Shyamalan notes, the film is now at a tidy 2hrs 8mins in length, pretty standard for a Hollywood thriller these days. While we will surely be receiving the best version of the film at cinemas, it’s intriguing to think about what we might be missing with all that cut footage.
SEE ALSO: Watch the latest trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass
Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men. This riveting culmination of his worldwide blockbusters will be produced by Shyamalan and Jason Blum.
Glass will see the return of Bruce Willis (David Dunn), Samuel L. Jackson (Elijah Price), Spencer Treat Clark (Joseph Dunn) and Charlayne Woodard (Mrs. Price) from Unbreakable and James McAvoy (Kevin Wendell Crumb) and Anya Taylor-Joy (Casey Cooke) from Split, while Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) also stars. The film is slated to hit cinemas on January 19th 2019.