Black Adam Originally Rated R With 10 Gruesome Kill Scenes

Black Adam nearly followed in the footsteps of Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad, as an original cut of the film received an R rating from the MPAA. Dwayne Johnson’s DCEU debut is hitting theaters this weekend and earned itself a PG-13, which has become the standard for the majority of superhero movies out there today. That rating, however, didn’t come until several cuts were made to Black Adam, removing some gruesome kill scenes.

Producers Hiram Garcia and Beau Flynn recently spoke to Collider about Black Adam‘s upcoming release, and they revealed that there was a much more violent cut of the movie. According to Garcia, violence is part of the character’s nature, so it was necessary to make the film more intense than most others in the genre.

“We really wanted to make sure that we honored the character of Black Adam. One of the things he’s known for is his aggression and violence, and to do a Black Adam movie that didn’t have that just wouldn’t have been authentic,” Garcia said. “So we always went into this knowing that we were going to push it as far as we did. We knew it was going to be a collaborative process with the MPAA to finally get it to where we were able, to get that rating, but we were able to pull it off. But it was really important for us to do that. And that’s something Dwayne was very committed to as well.”

What Was Changed From Black Adam’s Original Cut?

According to Flynn, quite a few edits were made in order to get the rating down to a PG-13. Most of those edits involved removing the more gruesome kills from Black Adam, though a couple were able to stay in the theatrical cut.

“We did have to make a lot of edits, actually. There are some personal moments that we really love, but we had to let them go. But we never compromised, we never had to cut a scene. We had some really cool moments, and if you notice, there are some great moments when Black Adam is in the fly bike chase sequence and drops one of the intergang soldiers. Then there’s this great moment where the truck bounces over the body. But those are moments that you need and remember in these movies, you know what I mean? You can’t play it safe, and you have to go for it. And I think we have four or five of those. At one point we had about ten, and we were able to find some compromise with the MPAA on that.”

There’s no word yet as to whether or not Warner Bros. plans to release the R-rated cut of Black Adam on the film’s home release.