When THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was originally delayed from November to Christmas 2013 we heard the reason was because director Martin Scorsese was trying to find a way to cut the running time down from a four hour plus cut. Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker were able to get the movie to one minute under three hours. This leaves the question that Scorsese fans have been asking: will we get to see a director’s cut of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET clocking in at over 240 minutes? Likely not.
In an interview with Gold Derby, Martin Scorsese discussed the original cut of the movie versus the eventual theatrical version was not a matter of a director’s cut but rather the first cut was a rough draft of where he wanted THE WOLF OF WALL STREET to go.
what happened from the four hour to the three hour version, is that finally I got the pace I wanted to. I finally got it going. I finally pushed and pushed and pushed and put the energy straight through the picture, and so it made it tighter.”
Scorsese compared the process to his early film ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE which came in at 195 minutes originally and ended up being only 105 minutes when all was said and done. I would imagine that when THE WOLF OF WALL STREET hits Blu-ray that we will see some deleted scenes, but likely not restored to the movie for an alternate take on the film. As muvch as I enjoyed THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, I still think it could have stood to lose another thirty minutes. Maybe Scorsese got lost in the same excess he was lampooning on screen.