Fans Want Disney To Release The Director's Cut of Robots

Fans on Twitter, encouraged by the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League, are petitioning Disney [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Fans on Twitter, encouraged by the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League, are petitioning Disney to release Chris Wedge's director's cut of Robots, the 2005 animated film from Blue Sky Studios. Originally distributed by 20th Century Fox before the Disney buyout, Robots featured the voice talent of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey, and Robin Williams. The film, released in March 2005, grossed $260.7 million worldwide against a $75 million budget, and earned generally positive reviews, but failed to become the cultural or box-office phenomenon that Blue Sky's Ice Age had become at the time.

Little is known about the Robots director's cut; the only clear evidence of its existence is reference to it on the director's commentary for the film. There, Wedge cites a particular scene that has an alternate version "that you'll see in the director's cut some day."

Fans are trying to make #ReleaseTheChrisWedgeCut trend on Twitter on Thursday, September 2, in the hopes of getting the studio's attention.

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Wedge, a veteran of animation and co-founder of Blue Sky, has not directed a film since 2017's Monster Trucks, which starred X-Men: First Class veteran Lucas Till. The filmmaker still served as an executive producer on Ferdinand, Spies in Disguise, and the upcoming Ice Age: Adventures of Buck Wild. Even if you don't know him as a director, it's likely you'd recognize his grunts and growls as the voice of Scrat, the acorn-obsessed saber-toothed squirrel in the Ice Age franchise.

One would think that Wedge's role as executive producer and co-founder would have been enough to get a director's cut of the movie made, if he was interested in it, but with the purchase of Fox by Disney and the shuttering of Blue Sky Studios, it's unlikely he has much influence on such a thing.

One fan has launched a petition (see it or sign it here) to try to call attention to the cause. On the site, they describe content that was missing from the final film, but included in promotional material ahead of the Robots release. Here's how that user, calling themselves "The Untitled Random Junk," describes the experience:

"[I] decided to look up for some pre-release info (Production History), and I noticed that on the sneak preview that was seen on the VHS of Garfield, there was TONNES of deleted scenes, that weren't included on the DVD's Bonus Features. Eg; Rodney riding the Crosstown with the Knitting Lady, the extended car scene with Cappy, and there was an entire sequence with this unknown character, by the name of Dr V. Needle, who lobotomises an unconscious Bigweld. (this would've taken place before the final climax) I then went onto Twitter and decided to spread awareness, by making a hashtag called #ReleaseTheChrisWedgeCut."

The hashtag on Twitter is currently being promoted by a number of Zack Snyder fans, who have also pitched in on similar campaigns to encourage studios to release director's cuts of Batman Forever, Suicide Squad, and the Amazing Spider-Man movies, among others.

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