Event Horizon Director Has Disappointing Update on a Director’s Cut

Before helping bring the Resident Evil series of movies to life, fans of horror and sci-fi knew director Paul W.S. Anderson for his 1997 film Event Horizon, which was a nightmarish descent into an intergalactic hell. While the film has earned a passionate following over the years, Anderson has regularly expressed how savagely the studio edited his original vision for the adventure, leading some to hope that a director’s cut could somehow be released, but the filmmaker himself has recently detailed how, given the nature of technology and home video in the late ’90s, it’s unlikely that there’s a substantial amount of footage that could be utilized for such a restoration.

“There are bits and pieces of Event Horizon that turn up every so often; a little bit on VHS here or there,” Anderson shared with CinemaBlend. “I think, unfortunately, the bulk of what was taken out of the movie has been lost. I think the only way to truly recreate the lost cut of Event Horizon, which was the original cut I presented to the studio that they were so horrified by because it was pretty extreme, I think the only way to recreate that is, actually, to shoot new material. But who knows, in the world of the Snyder Cut of Justice League? C’mon Paramount Pictures, all I need is a bit of money, and I can go and shoot all of that stuff with Joely Richardson, and Lawrence Fishburne, and Jason Isaacs. A little bit of de-aging, and we can just go shoot the whole thing again.”

The film focuses on the crew of a spaceship in the distant future coming across a vessel that had seemingly disappeared from record, as it was working with harnessing the power of a black hole to transport across the galaxy instantaneously. Instead, it appeared as though the ship inadvertently opened up a portal directly to Hell.

As far as why the film was cut so severely, Anderson detailed to Bloody Disgusting that his vision for the film was just too brutal for the studio.

“When we delivered the first cut to Paramount, they were just horrified by the movie,” the filmmaker admitted. “It was much darker and scarier than they ever thought it was going to be. An executive actually said to me, ‘We’re the studio that makes Star Trek,’ as if somehow I was like besmirching Star Trek as well. It wasn’t bad enough that I had made this horrible movie. So the movie ended up being trimmed a lot, and unfortunately, it was before DVD really popularized deleted scenes and things like that so there was no incentive for studios to keep that material.”

Despite the cut footage’s recovery seeming unlikely, Clive Barker’s Nightbreed suffered a similar fate in the early ’90s, where footage cut from the theatrical release was thought to be lost for the ages. However, the more time spent searching for the footage, the more footage turned up, which includes VHS-quality sequences. Advanced technology allowed that footage to be restored to nearly match the quality of the original film.

Scream Factory is seeking out as much lost Event Horizon footage as they can for the film’s upcoming home video release.

Event Horizon is currently being developed for a new TV series.

Are you hoping to get the director’s cut of the original film released? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!