When an early cut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked online, 20th Century Fox chairman Tom Rothman assured fans that the final theatrical version would be radically different and include around ten minutes worth of reshoots that had not yet been integrated into the film. Now, though, a HuffPo blogger claims to have caught the chairman in a lie -- and we've got a rebuttal from a highly-placed Fox source close to the film.
The accusation against Rothman was made by HuffPo entertainment writer Scott Mendelson, who noticed something interesting while perusing Wolverine pre-orders:
Remember when Tom Rothman swore up and down that the final version of the film would be ten minutes longer? Apparently that was a lie. The bootleg apparently ran 107 minutes with credits. The official running time listed in the AMC and Arclight websites lists the film as running... drum roll... 107 minutes. While Tom Rothman had no choice but to convince moviegoers that the free version would be vastly different from the completed picture, it'll be interesting to see the reaction should that not turn out to be the case. Because, at this point, it would seem to not be the case.
We ran Mendelson's claim by our Fox source, who responded, "It's lunacy. When the workprint was uploaded and pirated, the final cut of the movie wasn't done. The music was temporary, the sound was temporary, the effects weren't in place, there was still wirework, the footage that was shot wasn't integrated. What [Rothman] said to EW was that there was about ten minutes of [new] footage, so I don't know if Mendelson is just comparing apples to apples." Further elaborating, the source confirmed that the final running time (with credits) is 107 minutes, but claimed that cuts had been made to the leaked workprint before the additional footage was added, which resulted in a similar running time.
Meanwhile, Wolverine star Hugh Jackman had his hands and feet immortalized in cement today outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Claims that the final footprints may contain an extra ten centimeters of length went unverified at press time.
ยท Ten minutes shorter, eh? Final cut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has same running time as bootleg. [HuffPo]