Reflecting on the film’s meandering path to release, director Duncan Jones has revealed he cut close to 40 minutes of footage from Warcraft: The Beginning.
Speaking in an interview with The Daily Beast, the Moon and Source Code filmmaker went in-depth on the creative process behind bringing the fantastical realms of Azeroth and Draenor to the silver screen. In fact, buried within that cut footage was a nod to Jones’ past work and, specifically, Chesney Hawkes’ power ballad, “I am the One and Only.”
“If you know Moon or Source Code, there’s this very sweet, very talented guy named Chesney Hawks who wrote this really, really big hit in Britain called ‘I Am The One And Only.’ I used it as an alarm clock in Moon, and a ring tone in Source Code—and I actually got him to do a version as a bard in Warcraft.”
In order to wrangle Warcraft‘s running time into a two-hour window – it originally stretched for two hours and 40 minutes – the director conceded that the team “weren’t able to keep it in the cut. But somehow, maybe, I’ll just sneak it into the Twitterverse… he did a Warcraft-medievally version of his single, and it’s just brilliant. Unfortunately I was the only one who thought it was hilarious.”
Beyond that, there’s no mention of any additional scenes that remained on the cutting room floor, nor if they could have helped solve any of the problems raised during the movie’s first wave of middling reviews.
Warcraft: The Beginning has already stormed into the majority of theaters worldwide. Look for our own verdict of Duncan Jones’ lavish, CG-laden blockbuster to hit the site in the coming days.
