In an article from the upcoming issue of Filmmagasinet Ekko, provided early to THR, it’s revealed that director Lars Von Trier relinquished final cut of his upcoming sex epic, Nymphomaniac, to the film’s producer, Peter Aalbaek Jensen. In the interview, Jensen states that the film is being cut down from a hefty 5 1/2 hours down to a more manageable 4 hours.
Although Von Trier is still on a self imposed gag order after the Cannes debacle, Jensen says “The short version is against Lars’ own will, but he accepts it because he understands market mechanisms.” Von Trier has not even seen the cut that will be premiering in theaters in Denmark this Christmas.
In the article, Jensen is also quick to point out that the cuts are purely for commercial reasons and that none of the film’s explicit scenes have been removed. “You cannot make a film for more than 60 million kroners that is so lengthy. Five and a half hours is so extreme that it reduces market value so radically that investors would have felt they had bought a pig in a poke,” he states.
In other Nymphomaniac news, it was announced this week that the film will be released in the UK on March 7th, with the second part being released exactly a week later, on the 14th. Here’s hoping that the US follows that formula and doesn’t make us wait a year to see the second half.
