10 Movies That Were Re-Edited After Release (And Why)

8. Heaven's Gate

Django Unchained
United Artists

Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate was an absolute disaster. It endured a tumultuous production phase that sent the film way over budget and was a critical and commercial disappointment upon its release, destroying director Michael Cimino's career and sinking distributor United Artists.

Cimino's first cut ran for well over five hours, a version the studio completely refused to release (understandably). The director then went and chopped about two hours from the film, and this is the cut that premiered in New York on 19 November 1980, to an overwhelmingly negative reception.

After a short one-week run with poor financial returns, the film was yanked from cinemas, re-cut again (this time, down to two-and-a-half-hours), and re-released. Ultimately, this didn't help: Heaven's Gate closed after its second week in theatres, and in total, only grossed $3.5 million against a reported $44 million budget.

More like... Hell's Gate, right? Eh?

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.