Jason Isaacs On The Director’s Cut Event Horizon Deserves
After speculation as to whether a director's cut of Event Horizon is ever coming out, Jason Isaacs has said people waiting for it are wasting their time.
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Upon its release in 1997, Event Horizon was seen as a failure. The film only made $26 million worldwide, with a $60 million budget. However, Event Horizon did surprisingly well on DVD, prompting director Paul W.S. Anderson to say he was interested in putting together a director’s cut of the film. While fans of Event Horizon have waited years for this new version, star Jason Isaacs has said that if you’re waiting for the Event Horizon director’s cut, “you’re wasting your time.”
Originally, Event Horizon was rushed out by Paramount, after Titanic suffered delays. Paul W.S. Anderson’s version originally ran at 130 minutes, while the film eventually came out at 96 minutes. Anderson has said he thinks the film would be at its best at around 106 minutes. In an interview with Collider, Jason Isaacs discussed the scenes that were cut, but ultimately said he doesn’t believe there were any sequences that were cut that would make the film any better.
Jason Isaacs makes it sound like most of the footage that was cut was simply extra bits of odd and gory stuff. For example, Paul W.S. Anderson supposedly shot plenty more of the flashes of the old crew in Hell. Isaacs also says that the filming of his own death was particularly gruesome, with a sequence that focused on his internal organs and the gore. From what Isaacs says, it sounds as though the only things that were cut were gruesome elements and nothing that drastically changes the story in any way.
Even though Jason Isaacs says the director’s cut is akin to a conspiracy theory, it’s one that Paul W.S. Anderson has mentioned several times. After saying he wanted to work on a director’s cut, he soon discovered that most of the footage he had shot hadn’t been stored carefully or gone missing. In a 2011 interview, Anderson admitted that the extra footage would never be made available. But in an interview a year later, Anderson said there was a VHS tape with a rough cut that he planned on looking at. When asked about five years later in a 2017 interview, Anderson said he still hadn’t watched the tape. If a director’s cut does exist, Anderson doesn’t seem in any rush to watch it.
It does look as though Paramount is interested in reviving Event Horizon, this time as an Amazon series. There haven’t been any updates on the project since it was announced a year and a half ago, but Adam Wingard, director of You’re Next and The Guest, was in talks to executive produce and maybe direct the series. No word on if Paul W.S. Anderson would be involved, or if cast members like Laurence Fishburne and Jason Isaacs would return in some capacity.
Yet with Paul W.S. Anderson seemingly not anxious in trying to put out an Event Horizon director’s cut, and with Jason Isaacs saying that there’s no way this version exists, don’t hold your breath for the Event Horizon director’s cut.
