I had a chance to sit down with Oliver Stone to talk about World Trade Center this afternoon (more on that interview in a few days) and he casually mentioned a THIRD version of Alexander. Whaa?? I couldn’t let a topic like that go by and when pressed for details the great director had this to say:
“I’m doing a third version on DVD, not theatrical. I’m going to do a Cecile B Demille/Oliver Stone three hour forty five minute thing, I’m going to go all out, put everything I like in the movie. He was a complicated man, it was a complicated story and it doesn’t hurt to make it longer and let people who loved the film and see it more and understand it more,” he said.
I was a little surprised because I had assumed (as I’m sure some of you had) that the director’s cut was the final say on Alexander. We got back into World Trade Center after that but near the end of the interview I just had to ask him why he’d go back to the well on this one and when we could expect to see it. Again, he didn’t disappoint.
“I love working on it because I love the movie. I hope to have it done in two months, a month and a half and then it’s up to Warner. It will be a catalogue item, I don’t think they’ll go out and make a big thing of it.”
So there you have it, a third cut of Alexander coming to a DVD machine near you. I know I’ll be interested to see it because it’s one of the rare instances to see where a film became broken and how a master storyteller would go about putting it all back together. Stay tuned for the rest of the illuminating interview…
