Zack Snyder isn’t letting go of his 2011 action film Sucker Punch. He’s been talking a lot about it recently and how it’s a misunderstood “pure satire” film. He’s also talked about doing an extended director’s cut of the film and it seems like this is something that he’s actively pursuing.
This isn’t just a recut of his original film with the inclusion of cut scenes. Snyder wants to bring the original cast back together to shoot all new footage! Snyder talked about his Sucker Punch plans in an interview with Inverse, and explained that he’s currently working with Warner Bros. to make this happen.
While the film did already receive an extended version, with this version, he would go back in and do reshoots of the ending with the original cast and restore the film’s “super controversial” R-rated form. He explained:
“I’m working with Warner Bros. to try and find a window to go back in. Even though we did an extended version, it’s not the fully realized movie.”
As for getting the cast back together to help make his plan a reality, he said:
“I think it’s good [if] I can get those guys, Emily [Browning] and Abby [Cornish] and the crew back in. Some reshoots would be amazing.”
It will be interesting to see if Snyder actually manages to pull this off. I’d be curious to see what his original vision of the film was, with a completely different ending. When previously talking about the ending, Snyder said:
“I’ve never gotten around to doing the director’s cut. I still plan to at some point. But in the original ending when Babydoll is in the chair in the basement with Blue – she’s already been lobotomized – when the cop shines the light on her, the set breaks apart and she stands up and she sings a song on stage.”
The movie does end with a lobotomy, but it implies that Babydoll also received justice for the abuse that came from her stepfather. Snyder went on to say, the studios thought the original ending was too weird:
“It’s weirdly not optimistic and optimistic at the same time. That’s kind of what the tone was at the end. We tested it and the studio thought it was too weird, so we changed it. You’ll get to see it at some point, I’m sure. I hope.”
When talking about the Director’s Cut of the film, Snyder explained: “I think that the director’s cut sort of contains a slightly more sort of sci-fi, deconstructive element. Because for me, one of the things that I was tackling in, sort of conceptually, when I was thinking about it, was a way to have the irony of something like heavy metal, something super violent, super sexual, super visually gigantic in a movie where it has no business belonging in a movie like this.”
He added: “It cost a ton of money and that is like a real legitimate production value and it’s crazy. Normally, those two things don’t go together too well, because these things have big commercial appeal. So if you make it too niche … No, but you know what I mean? It allowed me to do both … so when you see the director’s cut, you just see something a lot more weirdly, more personal, and bizarre.”
Sucker Punch follows a young woman named Babydoll who is institutionalized by her abusive stepfather after her sister’s death. While confined in a mental institution, she retreats into an imaginative, fantasy world to escape her grim reality. In this alternative reality, Babydoll and four other patients become warriors who must retrieve five items to help them break free before Babydoll is lobotomized.
