I believe this is what happened with Requiem for a Dream. As far as I know, the cut that landed the NC-17 rating and the unrated theatrical cut are the same.

Atom Egoyan's 'Where the Truth Lies' also comes to mind.

It is. Artisan rejected the NC-17 rating and released it unrated (although they later got an R rating for an edited video version). CARA's database lists the NC-17 as having been "surrendered."

DJ

This was what I thought 'Requiem' had done, and generally understood to be the more common practice (the original 'Dawn of the Dead' comes to mind, or 'Re-Animator' from what the director says on the DVD).

I think it's worth pointing out that, according to stories at the time [which, admittedly, being publicity-based are not neccessarily reliable], WB wanted to release the cut of 'The Dreamers' which got an NC-17 as "unrated" after they announced they wouldn't force him to re-cut it, and they weren't allowed, because they're an MPAA signatory, and that cut was, in fact, rated by the MPAA.

Has anybody ever pinned down actual stated on-the-books reasons why theaters won't show NC-17/unrated stuff, or newspapers won't advertise it? I know it is related to the implication that it's pornographic, and I believe the theaters feel compelled to more actively keep children out of the theater and, thus, might have to have an extra person or two watching those doors ... but does anybody know how stuff like that is explained? It seems to me like it's a policy which is going to get re-considered in the next few years, as "unrated" seems to be such a hot marketing thing.

The leases that theatres have often restrict them from showing X/NC-17 or unrated films, as many theatres are in shopping centers, etc. And despite all of the hyped unrated DVD releases, they are still a definite rarity for theatrical release.

DJ

and unfortunately as I see it, the eventual release of the unrated DVD kind of hurts the overrall BO performance, I basically didn't see 'The Hills Have Eyes' remake just because I knew that the DVD edition would be the unrated cut.

not to be nitpicky here, but 'The Dreamers' was a Fox Searchlight release.

That's what I get for deleting the parenthetical "I think it was WB, but whoever the distrib was" ... Of course you're right.

And I agree with you about box office. I think at some point, they will try to release unrated directly into theaters, as an experiment, with a big enough release (but still quite small, as those horror movies are cheap) ... but it might be that they're entirely satisfied with the arrangement as is: theatrical release as basically an advertisement for the SUPER-EXTREME DVD WITH FOOTAGE TOO INTENSE ["hot" if there's nudity] FOR THEATERS!

Is that still true? I thought those were much less prevalent with the rise of the huge multi-plex...

but, yeah, okay, if the multi-plex is anywhere near anything, people will complain if it's showing "adult" stuff, which I still think is stupid, but is the kind of stupid that doesn't get overruled often.

From dvdactive.com:

http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/bad-santa7.html

So the director's cut is a couple minutes less, and the extras are pretty much the same as the Unrated version. The film would have to be drastically different for me to double dip on it.

Okay, here's an interesting story I heard from Patton Oswald tonight. Apparently he had a scene in the Bad Santa where he played Billy Bob's Alcoholic Anonymous sponsor. The studio made Zwiegoff cut the scene because it acknowledged that the main character is an alcoholic and the would be morally unacceptable.

I own the UR Badder Santa dvd, I love the film, but I'd rather go out and buy a roll of toilet paper or something than waste my time on a cut that is just 10 minutes less. Give me a break.

"just"? The fact that the studio took the film away from the director and re-cut it [with the sort of director's approval which sounds prompted by "We're doing this whether you approve or not, but if you approve, we might let you release your version someday. Do you approve?"] making it more mainstream friendly doesn't factor in at *all*? You just go by length, eh? So the best version of Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead' is the German one that just cobbles together the most footage, right?

From everything the director, and people who have seen it, says, it's a vastly different cut. But I guess the "Love Conquers All" version of 'Brazil' isn't really an edit that completely changes everything, is it? It's "just" an hour shorter.

Enjoy the most cobbled-together, least coherent of the three 'Bad Santa's.

So does this mean there will be a longer "F me Santa!" scene?

The reason the running time may be alittle shorter than the 'unrated' version is because scenes the director was forced to shoot to 'lighten' the tone are deleted. These include the subplot with that calender the kid has as he tries to 'connect' with Billys charecter. Also the 'happy' ending appears to be gone as well. And since the film originally appeared to be heading for a darker ending,only to then cut to a sappy cliched happy epilogue. I'm sure it won't end on a 'upbeat' note this time around. But we'll see,since I only got this info from the ebert overlooked fest article linked many posts ago.

It sure would be nice if they would just release a set that has all three versions.

Eff that. I want to see the "Shit Happens When You Party Naked" shirt in it's full glory.

Cover art is up now:

http://www.davisdvd.com/images/covers_big/badsanta.jpg

That by far has to be the worst cover art I have ever seen.

I doubt the text is completey finalized (which might make it look more concrete), but I really do not like the choice of colors and layout - period.

yuck

Reviews? Comments? Anything?

You mean 3 releases in 2 and 1/2 years of a movie that was not even good. IMO it was between alright- sorta good.

So we get 3 releases of this movie. But I had to wait 6 years for an Apoclypse now release.

I bought it, while its an interesting cut, I don't know if its warrants an additional release. Most of the scenes with Thorton and the kid are excised, some profanity is added, and the ending is slightly different.

We got a similar weird problem here with 'Eyes Wide Shut.' The Ontario Censor Board approved the uncut version for general release, but WB wouldn't allow it to be shown in theatres. Reasons offered ranged from "the censored version is the one Kubrick aproved" to "we aren't allowed to show different versions in diffeent territories." None of which made even a lick of sense. (plus, I could never figure out why WB sent an uncensored version to the censor board in the first place) So we ended up with the censored version in the theatres, despite the Ontario Censor Board publicly announcing that they had nothing to do with it. It was a big deal in the local papers at the time.

Oddly, even though we can't see the uncensored version in theatres or on DVD (in both cases; due to WB, not the censor board), CityTV regularly shows the UNCENSORED version on television at the 8PM timeslot. Quite often, actually. AFAIK, they've never received complaints.