Next month kicks off 2019 with M. Night Shyamalan’s highly-anticipated sequel to UNBREAKABLE and SPLIT – GLASS – and so far it looks like an interesting thriller/superhero mashup with Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy and Bruce Willis. Turns out we were quite close to having a full-on epic on our hands, and Shyamalan revealed the first cut of the movie was well over three hours long.
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2017’s SPLIT ended on a shocker when Bruce Willis’ David Dunn showed up on screen, revealing this was a sequel to 2000’s UNBREAKABLE all along, and teasing a suitably epic third installment. Now GLASS is one month away, and Shyamalan spoke with Digital Spy and talked about initially his cut of the movie three hours and 20 minutes long, which was the legitimate, full version of the movie.
"The script was really long, it was almost 150 pages and the first cut of the movie was 3 hours and 20 minutes, it was really long. Then it started tightening [and] tightening until we got to the 2.08 that you can see.”
He continued, saying how in the end he was able to chop it down to a little over two hours, discovering that much of the exposition he included to help audiences refamiliarize themselves with the characters and setting wasn’t at all necessary.
"All she needs to go is, 'My name is Patricia' and you're there. That's a much longer scene in the screenplay where you're reliving the humour and the relationship and the connection to the girls and even realising she has multiple personalities.”
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Finally, he went into how he pitched the movie to Disney and Universal (which own the rights to UNBREAKABLE and SPLIT, respectively), saying how the strength of GLASS’ concept and cast alone is enough to sell the movie on its own merits, regardless of it being a sequel.
"I said to [rights owners] Disney and Universal, 'Pretend there's no previous movies and I came to you and I said that I want to make a movie about a hospital that treats people who believe they're superheroes and three of their patients escape.’ I want to make you that movie, will you make that movie? Oh and by the way, it stars Bruce Willis, Sam Jackson, James McAvoy and Sarah Paulson. Will you make that movie?' Yes, you'll make that movie… Person XYZ who hasn't seen the other two will come to see that."
Luckily Shyamalan realized the error in a three-hour-plus movie like GLASS and didn’t get clouded with some artistic “But it’s my vision!” delusion. This echoes the Russos talking about how AVENGERS: ENDGAME was at one point pushing three hours but assured they would continue to cut it down. Though we would all be there for these long movies, you can already hear the shuffles in the seats when audiences discover they’re sitting in a movie that should have an interlude smushed in the middle.
GLASS hits theaters January 18, 2019.