We’ve recently learned that not only did a longer and more gruesome cut of ‘Event Horizon’ exist but that the only reason it hasn’t been released is that no one can seem to find where it went to. This is a piece of news that both raised my hopes and crushed them as the film was one of my favorite pieces of space horror for years. A longer cut would have been great, and while a sequel could have been fun to further explore this twisted little Pandora’s Box that humanity unleashed upon itself, director Paul W.S. Anderson appears to be against that ever happening as well.
Originally filmed in 1997, the movie had an all star cast which included Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Jason Isaacs, and Joely Richardson. Not only that but it showed off Neill in his creepiest role of all time.
News as to why there hasn’t been a director’s cut came during a recent Facebook Q&A With Anderson. When asked about it, he first stated:
“There was a lot more that was shot that isn’t in the movie. But you’ll never see the messed up version because we made Event before the kind of DVD revolution. You know, DVD ushered in this era when you had to have additional footage, deleted scenes, things like that. There was no call for that back when we were just doing VHS cassettes and LaserDiscs.”
So the problem on why it isn’t being put together?
“So the material just wasn’t archived very well, and since the movie became a big cult classic, Paramount have asked us to come back in and do different versions, and we looked for the material, and it just doesn’t exist.”
Anderson isn’t saying it will never happen. It sounds like he would be happy to put it all back together if the footage did turn up somewhere:
“Escape from New York, they discovered a whole new cut of it in some shoeboxes somewhere, so you know, maybe.”
It sounds like Anderson doesn’t have much hope of the deleted footage popping up so it isn’t something I would hold my breath for. Still, if the extra footage ever does show up in Anderson’s lifetime, we might be able to see a complete version.
Anderson, however, is completely against a sequel:
“The things that kind of handicapped us the first time around, the fact that the movie isn’t tied up with a neat little bow, it left things open… at the time it was a handicap. I think maybe if it had all been really neat and there had been some monster running around killing everyone it probably would have done bigger business, but I think people still talk about it because it’s a movie that invites conversation afterwards, because we don’t tell you exactly what’s going on and what to think. And I think that’s become one of its strengths, and I think the danger of returning to that world is you don’t want to overexplain things.”
“Not that I’m comparing my movie to 2001 [A Space Odyssey], but there’s 2001, amazing, and then there’s 2010, that explains everything. You wondered what that thing was? Well then, here’s the explanation. And you don’t need that.
While it sounds like we’ll never get a sequel and likely never an extended cut it, we’ll always have the original.
Are you annoyed that the only reason we never got the full take on Anderson’s vision of the film was shoddy storage of the original shots of the movie? Would you want to see an extended version of ‘Event Horizon’? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Crave Online
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!
