It’s no secret that Rian Johnson’s initial cut of The Last Jedi came in at a whopping three hours in length.
History tells us that the filmmaker, who’s about to orchestrate a brand new Star Wars trilogy for the folks at Lucasfilm, reined in his creative vision quite substantially during post, resulting in the two-and-a-half-hour blockbuster that’s now dominating the box office charts.
But even after Johnson’s strict editing, Star Wars: The Last Jedi still weighed in as the longest film in the series, which only raises the more pertinent question: what about all those deleted scenes? Well, it seems like we’ll get to see at least a few of them on the film’s upcoming Blu-ray release, as The Digital Bits reports that their sources claim it’ll arrive with 20 minutes of footage that was cut from the pic.
Not only that, but the outlet pegs March 27th as the date that The Last Jedi will be yours to own. Chalk that up as a rumor for now, given that Disney hasn’t made an official announcement yet, but for the moment, we have no reason not to believe TDB’s report. No other details were revealed, but speaking about that nixed footage a while back, editor Bob Ducsay said the following:
There’s some really nice stuff in there, but we actually cut that stuff pretty early because it was very clear that that section of the movie was completely lopsided in favor of those three (Finn, Rose and DJ), and it just didn’t support it. But it’s good stuff. It’s really good stuff.
I assume when you’ll see it, you’ll enjoy it because I mean, we all did. It was cut early, and how you always know is like my staff, there’s a decent number of assistants and collaborators that work in the cutting room, and they were all complaining when we cut the sequence. And that’s how you know that it was something that people like.
Again, it’s best to take all this news about the Blu-ray with a pinch of salt until Disney gives us the official word, but a March release would make sense and as we mentioned before, we’ve already heard about all the deleted scenes several times now from various cast and crew. As for what other features may be included on the disc, well, we’d imagine the usual behind the scenes docs will be there, too, but again, until we get an announcement from the studio, all we can do is speculate.
Staying in the here and now, though, Star Wars: The Last Jedi continues to use the Force at the box office, pummeling through one record after another and breaking into the top 20 highest grossing films of all-time. The current total stands at $1.12 billion, and even despite a slow start in China, analysts still expect a finish in the $1.6 billion region.