Half of Babylon?

UPDATE: Twitch has made an amendment to the previous report about the drastic disparity in running time — Kassovitz himself has apparently been chipping at the Euro cut as well and slimmed it down to around 105 minutes, so the studio’s UK/US edit may only be approximately 15 minutes shorter.

4/8/08 – Vin Diesel hasn’t exactly had the best success in the past few years. His last pricey sci-fi flick seems to have effectively ended the RIDDICK franchise (sadly), his courtroom drama FIND ME GUILTY was ignored, and I’d rather not discuss THE PACIFIER if possible.

Diesel will next appear in the futuristic actioner BABYLON AD, but is that flick also looking shaky? While there was supposedly some behind-the-scenes friction during production, that doesn’t seem to be the cause for concern now — it’s the studio’s truncated version of the movie.

We previously heard that European audiences would get a longer version of the movie from director Matthieu Kassovitz (LA HAINE, CRIMSON RIVERS, GOTHIKA) with a more heady, dense and dramatic tone. Meanwhile, US and UK audiences would get a shorter, more action-focused experience. And that certainly seems to be the case by nearly half — the Euro cut will reportedly run around 160 minutes, while the shorter version Fox recently submitted to the UK clocks in just around 90 minutes. And with the equivalent of a PG-13 rating.

In the flick, Diesel plays a mercenary escorting a genetically altered woman from post-apocalyptic Russia to New York City. It’ll just take him less time to get there when we see it…