LES MIS To Be Released On DVD/Blu on March 19th

[Jordan Catalano]

Man, They're Just Releasing Them Faster & Faster

[broadwayfever]

I'm still waiting for Les Mis 25th Concert CD

[rosscoe(au)]

Or if you search you can find it online already in the award screeners that have been sent out

[darquegk]

True, one could, but the DVD will be spiffy and have commentary and alternate takes and deleted scenes... one would hope anyway.

Any word on a director's cut yet?

[kyl3fong2]

I'd like to know if there will be a director's cut as well, that way I'll hold out on buying this DVD until the extended cut is released.

[jeffmiele]

There was an interview recently with Hooper, I think on broadway.com, where he said the original cut was just about 4 hours long. He also said he would not be releasing deleted scenes or a directors cut on DVD/Blu-Ray because he did not want to eliminate the option of reworking things and rereleasing at some point during the line. I'm on my phone right now otherwise I would have searched for the article and found the link for you guys, sorry.

[jo]

http://collider.com/tom-hooper-les-miserables-james-bond-interview/

Very interesting interview, but here are the relevant parts re the director's cut --

>>Hooper: Yeah, the assembly was just under four hours.

Obviously that has to be like “holy eff” when you sit down and you’re saying to yourself “I’ve got a four hour first cut.” Because a four hour first cut, that’s a pretty long movie.

Hooper: [Laughs]

So what was it like? Obviously you get rid of your assembly and you put together your directors cut, how long was your director’s cut?

Hooper: The director’s cut was about three hours. So I got about an hour out between the assembly and the director’s cut. I got it to about 2:45 and then hit a bit of a wall because there comes a point at which you’ve made a decision about what songs you’re going to keep. What’s fundamentally different about doing this and a normal movie is you can’t take time out anywhere you want like it or not. If you’re editing, say this dialogue that we’re having, you could snip a second out every time I paused, every time you paused take a second out. You could take a sentence of mine out and leave another sentence. You’ve got tremendous control on the pacing of our dialogue that we’re having. If we were singing you can’t just stick your knife in, you can’t take a second out here a second out there a sentence out there because the musical construction falls all over the place. And I realized in the end that the only way I could get it down any more, and I was very committed to getting it down to 2:30, was to try to become more expert at the detail of musical construction so that I could really understand in terms of bars what was possible and what was not possible.

I really thought about it and asked advice from my team and there was a day, in one day on a Sunday I took out twelve minutes in one sitting because I had finally worked out all those musical places where you could cut material out. And a lot of it was hangers to the show, because in a stage show you have to have introduction music to take you in somewhere and exit music to change the set over. And I suddenly started to realize that there was lots of music like that that wasn’t essential to the film that we were hanging on to because of the tradition of where it had come from. I think one of the hugest challenges of this, and any director or editor will know exactly what I mean, is when you musical you surrender a huge amount of the control of pacing because you can’t pace the songs up. “I dreamed a dream”, you can pick your take but you can’t pace it up, so if that section of the film is sagging for any reason you can’t dig in to that place to do it. So when I was shooting I was always trying to work out ways of giving myself different gears or different control of pacing through the way I shot stuff if I knew I couldn’t do it in time terms. It’s a real challenge of the form, pacing something where a lot of it you’re not allowed to touch because of the way music works.

I asked Eric and I’ll ask you, say this film is super successful would you be willing to do an extended cut, because I know what that means and Eric pointed it out, you’d have to really go in and do a huge new score it would be a lot of work, could you ever see yourself doing a longer version of this whether Blu-ray or theatrical?

Hooper: I used to think definitely I would do a longer version, [but] having been through the oil tanker that this thing is, to wrestle it to where we got it, I’m aware that the moment you go, “let’s go back in” it’s not a simple process. But let’s see how it goes and if we feel there’s tremendous demand I’d always consider it. It’s difficult because at the same time I feel that I’ve paced it as I wanted it to be paced and do I want to put out in a world a less well paced version? I’m not sure. If there’s interest in the community of fans of the musical then I would definitely consider it.

Is there anything that you would consider deleted scenes that fans can expect on the Blu-ray?

Hooper: No, because I want to give myself the option of the extended version.

That’s a very honest answer, I appreciate that.

Hooper: Having also said that I might not do an extended version.

Yea, but it’s good for if there is no extended version in ten years you can release the deleted scenes and have everyone be super happy. I am curious though if you did an extended version down the road how much longer do you think it could be based on the footage you have?

Hooper: I’d probably put maybe fifteen, twenty minutes back. I wouldn’t go back to the four hour spectacular.

A lot of people don’t realize that the four hour version is the take from beginning to end.

Hooper: Yeah, and everyone comes through every door and crosses and sits down and does the whole action. I think the battle sequence was about a quarter hour long in the full version.

There was so much interest in this. People were videotaping when you were filming in London any time you were on location three were photos getting out, were you excited by the interest or were you like, “oh please god no more footage get on the internet.”?<<<

[jo]

double post

[DEClarke]

Looks like I'll be waiting to purchase the film then...

[jimmycurry01]

"Looks like I'll be waiting to purchase the film then..."

That is what you got out of that? To me it sounded more like he was saying, "Yeah, it is possible I may do an extended cut someday, but don't hold your breath."

[Rainbowhigh23]

Seems like five minutes ago we were counting the days to the 10PM showing on Christmas Eve.

[AEA AGMA SM]

I agree with you, jimmy. I certainly did not get a sense that two months later we're going to be getting an additional release with all this extra footage. You might be waiting a very long time before you see any extended edition.

[hunterh24601]

Listen,
Tom Hooper said in an interview that there is a possiblilty that a director's cut of "Les Mis" will be released on DVD & Blu-Ray. But he's only going to do it if there is a high demand.

[theaternut]

My screener will do.

[hunterh24601]

There are NO Plans for a 25th anniversary concert cd

[DEClarke]

Extended cut or not, why release the film with relatively no special features. For me to buy the DVD, they'd better pack it with some extras.

I've been screwed over buying movies the day they came out enough. Bare bones releases ALWAYS get re-released with major extras and what not. I may be waiting until what Christmas 2013. I seriously doubt they'll wait a long time to release this film with a glorious amount of extras and special cuts and... and... and... The demand will be there for that product.

[Wildcard]

The extras for the release will likely be the behind-the-scenes videos they've been using while campaigning for the Oscars