Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained is set to have its first awards season screening on December 5 in Los Angeles, but word from Kris Tapley at HitFix is that Tarantino editor Fred Raskin have recently gone back to the editing bay to tweak the film a bit.
Tapley posted on Twitter a message saying, “Two weeks ago Django was three hours and 12 minutes long. They’ve experimented with it since, re-ordering scenes, etc. Down to the wire.”
This could all be nothing, or it could be a case of Harvey Weinstein requesting Tarantino cut the film down a bit as I know some screenings have been held as even a few commenters around these parts have seen it and had a few words to say (including saying it is at least 15 minutes under three hours) and Weinstein isn’t exactly a fan of films running over three hours. Of course, Tarantino and Harvey have a great relationship so I doubt Tarantino would ever be asked (or would allow himself) to compromise his vision.
That said, the film is still on schedule for a December 25 release with Jamie Foxx playing the recently freed slave Django who teams with the German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to hunt down a trio of lowlifes eventually leading them on a mission to rescue Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from the clutches of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), an evil plantation owner.
Two new trailers for the film have arrived recently along with the two Empire magazine covers you see above, which I’ve included in much larger versions below (via The Playlist).
