There’s an extended cut ofThe Flashthat adds about another hour and a half to the superhero movie’s lengthy runtime, and there’s a chance fans may get to see it one day. Now playing in theaters,The Flashis a movie that took many years to make its way to the big screen. If you’re going out to see what has become one of the most-hyped movies of the year, you may want to get the large popcorn, asThe Flashis in no way a short film. Its running time is approximately around two hours and 35 minutes long.
Before getting to that final runtime for its theatrical cut, however,The Flashwas whittled down to a four-hour cut in post-production. From there, directorAndy Muschiettistill needed to remove about an hour and a half of footage to prepare the release for theaters. This meant leaving a lot of footage on the cutting room floor, but at the end of the day, the director is much happier with the version that’s now showing in theaters. With that said, Muschietti isn’t opposed to having fans see the four-hour cut someday.
“Maybe," Muschietti said when asked if the four-hour cut will ever be shown publicly, viaVanity Fair. “I’m definitely more happy with this version than the four-hour version.”
On how the cut came to be four hours originally, the director added, “You get excited, and you start improvising with actors, and suddenly you have a scene that has doubled the duration of the script.”
Related:The Flash Director Andy Muschietti Will Direct Batman Reboot the Brave and the Bold
Release the Muschietti Cut?
Even before getting to the four-hour cut, earlier edits forThe Flashwere spanning up to five hours. For Muschietti, it was “fun” at first to see all of the special cameos and other surprises coming together, but it becomes a problem when it’s realized that hours of that footage needs to go. With that said, there’s a lot of “interesting” material left on the cutting room floor, even if Muschietti feels that the theatrical cut worked out just fine.
“You have to face the edit and say, ‘Okay, we need to remove one hour and a half of this movie. How’s it going to happen?’” Muschietti explains. “At the end of six months, it’s fun. At the beginning, it’s just chaos, and whatever you start doing is wrong, seen in hindsight, because it’s trial and error. You try a lot of things.”
He continues, “There’s a lot of things that are in the movie that are on the edit room floor, but this is really the best version of the movie… Some [cut scenes] are more interesting than others. 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 Flash, which stars Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, and Sasha Calle, is now playing in movie theaters.
