8 Movies That Were Changed AFTER They Were Released
3. Significant Edits Turned The Movie From A Flop Into An Oscar-Winner (Cinema Paradiso)
It's hailed as a classic today, but Giuseppe Tornatore's Oscar-winning drama had a troublesome beginning when it was first shown to the public over 30 years ago.
The movie was first released on 17 November 1988 in the director's home country of Italy, but it underperformed at the box-office and didn't make much of a splash. This version was 155 minutes long, which, considering that the film is quite slow, was likely a big reason why audiences weren't interested.
Over the next two years the movie was released in a host of international territories, but major changes to its runtime had been implemented in order to make it more digestible, and thus, more commercially viable. Over 30 minutes of footage was chopped - which seems quite drastic - but regardless, this version of the film was a hit, and went on to win Best Foreign Language Film at the 1990 Academy Awards.
In 2002, Tornatore went back to his film once more and crafted a three-hour long director's cut, an edit that can be found on Blu-Ray and DVD copies of the film.