Godzilla vs. Kong Director Shoots Down Talks of Five-Hour Director’s Cut

Thanks to the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, audiences are now wondering what other exciting projects could be released in the future that serve as extended editions of movies, incorporating impressive visual effects back into the overall narrative, but Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard recently shot down the possibility of that happening with his new film, despite having amassed what would likely equate to a five-hour film. While he may have filmed a lot more of the adventure, from his perspective, he thinks the film works best at its two-hour run time, though he wouldn’t rule out returning to the film to spend more time on its sound design.

“There’s certainly enough footage to make a five-hour version of this film, I’m sure,” Wingard revealed to Den of Geek. “But making a longer film is easier than making a shorter film in a lot of ways. For me, this is the version that worked the best, and I don’t see any reason to do a director’s cut. Probably the only thing if, 10 years from now, somebody said, ‘Hey, do you want to do a director’s cut of Godzilla vs. Kong?’ I would probably just use that time to have another 40 days in the sound mix, because I just love that kind of thing.”

Interestingly, while Godzilla vs. Kong serves as the culmination of Legendary’s MonsterVerse, which kicked off in 2014 with Godzilla, Wingard never wanted the film to have a bloated run time like other team-up films.

“I always knew that I wanted this movie to be two hours or under,” the filmmaker admitted. “I never wanted it to be over that. I wanted this to be a thrill-a-minute kind of ride. So yeah, could I make an extremely long director’s cut? Absolutely. But I would never want to… For better or worse, this is my movie.”

Wingard also admitted that, while the impression of a “director’s cut” is that it’s a longer version of a film that includes everything that was filmed, he doesn’t feel that necessarily has to be the case.

“The funny thing about that is I don’t even know that people believe it whenever I say this kind of thing,” Wingard confessed. “Because I think everybody’s been so kind of led to believe that a director’s cut is always longer and there’s always more.”

Godzilla vs. Kong is in theaters and on HBO Max now.

Do you wish you got a longer adventure? Let us know in the comments below!