Basterds gets edit?

UPDATE: Variety’s Anne Thompson has more about the below-mentioned edits. Tarantino obviously rushed post-production to make Cannes, but still has some breathing room in order to retain final cut, which would require an additional 19 minutes of footage. [SPOILERS] “He’ll edit together one scene that he shot but didn’t assemble; it comes right before the La Louisiane sequence featuring Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger as a British soldier under cover and a German movie star who wants to help him bring down the Third Reich. The scenes featuring Maggie Cheung as Madame Mimieux, the proprietor of a Paris cinema who takes in Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), won’t be restored. It doesn’t add to the narrative.” Tarantino will also preview the movie in the US and do additional fine-tuning and tweaking before its August release.

5.23.09 — Quentin Tarantino’s WWII “guys on a mission” film INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS has finally been seen by a few eyes at Cannes, and the most common criticism seems to be that a few lengthy dialogue scenes could stand a trim.

Word is that Universal (the Weinsteins’ partner on the movie) wants an edit of the epic before it hits US screens in August. Ah, but the twist: will the new cut be shorter, longer, or just different? According to Anne Thompson at Variety, QT may indeed be hitting the editing room soon, but reminds them that the Cannes version clocks at two hours and 27 minutes, “well under his contractual final cut length of two hours 48 minutes.”

So what might get spliced back in? As Twitch points out, Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung (HERO, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) filmed scenes for the movie that were carved out before Cannes. Will she be rescued from the cutting room floor? Guess we’ll find out in a few months…