A rumor has surfaced on many sites this past week saying that director Mathieu Kassovitz’s Babylon A.D., starring Vin Diesel, would get a shorter cut here in North American and be shown as a 2 hour and 40 minute movie overseas. Production company MNP Entreprise has addressed the rumor:
The last days have been busy with news about the length and the rating of Babylon AD. I always find it amazing to see rumors grow from other rumors or misunderstanding. Therefore I think the time is good to give you some updates.
Babylon AD has never had a 2h40min cut. This rumor came from a joke Mathieu did in front of some journalists last september. Apparently some of them didn’t understand it… The approximate length of the film is 1h40min and this is what has been delivered to our partner, FOX. So I can reassure you, FOX is not chopping up the film and cutting 70min like I read on Rotten Tomatoes ! 🙂
Oh and about the PG13, that was a contractual agreement between Fox and us, so there is no surprise on that end.
The truth is Fox – like any other studio – will have their final cut on their territories and Mathieu Kassovitz has his on the European ones. So there will naturally be a few differences between the two versions.
Now about the film, StudioCanal is working on teasers and the poster for the European territories as I speak. A French teaser should be released on the web quite soon!
In the sci-fi action-thriller, opening Stateside on August 29, a veteran-turned-mercenary (Diesel) agrees to escort a woman from Russia to Germany, not realizing that she’s the host for an organism that a cult wants to harvest into a genetically-modified Messiah.
