David McKenzie has made ‘Outlaw King’ 20 minutes shorter following negative feedback.
The director debuted his movie at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) earlier this month and after critics hit out at the 137-minute run time of the film – which features Chris Pine as Scottish King Robert the Bruce, who went from murderer to king to outlaw and back to the throne in the 1300s – he has taken their comments on board and re-edited the picture, which he’d completed just two days before its premiere.
He told Deadline: "I could feel what the audience was like in the theatre. I’m sensitive to the way they felt.
"It was entirely my decision."
The day after the TIFF screening, David and producer Gillian Berrie notified Netflix they would make some changes to the film, which will stream on the platform but also has a theatrical release in November.
He said: "Three days later I was back editing."
However, the director is keeping quit about what he has dropped from the movie in order not to spoil it for audiences.
He simply noted there were "some complete sequences that I felt weren’t helping the story move along" in the first act and early part of the third act.
Some minor characters have been cut entirely, but they didn’t serve a significant role in the whole movie, and David thinks the new 117-minute cut is much better.
He said: "The play-ability is better now and the access to the characters…
"It’s worth another look, and I encourage critics who saw it and didn’t connect with it to see it again. It has a different sense since it’s under two hours, but it’s still very much an epic."
But one part that hasn’t been changed is Chris’ full frontal nude scene, even though the director can’t understand why it caused such a sensation after the premiere.
He said: "I can’t understand why people get worked about that. I made ten films and most of them had male frontal nudity; it’s a bathing scene and people do tend to get out of the bath without clothes."
David McKenzie cuts Outlaw King run time
