Not many movies can get away with being three hours long. The Godfather certainly pulls it off. Saving Private Ryan? OK. The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Sure. Avatar? Eh.
Batman v Superman? Uhhhhhh.
On the chance you do want to sit through 180 minutes of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent going at it, you’ll eventually be able to, thanks to an extended, R-rated director’s cut that will be released on DVD and Blu-ray.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which hits theaters next Friday (March 25), is two hours and 30 minutes to begin with, but apparently director Zack Snyder felt like that wasn’t enough. The film will be rated PG-13 in theaters but R on DVD, because Snyder cut some violence in order to secure the more permissive rating, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
ZACK The why of that is [the DVD version] is a half-hour longer, and some of that additional material is some of the stuff we took out for the rating. I was like, “Cool, I can put it back in for the director’s cut.” There was nothing by design. This was the material I just put back in, and then when [the MPAA] looked at it again, they were like, “Oh, now the movie’s rated R.” And, by the way, it’s not a hard R. There’s no nudity. There’s a little bit of violence. It just tips the scale.
Snyder said the R-rating does not have to do with the success of Deadpool, the R-Rated superhero spoof movie that hit theaters last month and has become one of the biggest ever comic book movies.
Batman v Superman has people pretty excited (and also maybe a little bit nervous), but it’ll have to be awfully good for anyone to get psyched about the three-hour-long version.
