Page 1 of Kill Bill to be split into two movies....

Quote:
"It`s been confirmed - director Quentin Tarantino`s Kill Bill will be split into two films, with the first part to be released on October 10.

Miramax Films will take the unusual and potentially risky move of releasing "Kill Bill," the much-anticipated Quentin Tarantino martial arts action-adventure film, as two movies, the first to open in the fall. Miramax will in effect be taking a three-hour film with a 200-page script and turning it into a serial.

Harvey Weinstein, a co-founder of Miramax, which is financing the film, said in an interview on Monday that the first installment would be in theaters on Oct. 10. The second release date is in still being negotiated, but it could be two to six months later, he said."


F***ing hell, it`s only three hours long. I`ve sat in a cinema and watched the Star Wars Trilogy Special Editions back to back without taking a p***. That is 6 hours. Miramax has become a bunch of money grabbing arseholes.

I agree. If this is true it`s a pretty cynical move on behalf of Miramax. Still, double the money for them!

It`s true - this is from the New York Times...

Quote:
LOS ANGELES, July 15 — Miramax Films will take the unusual and potentially risky move of releasing "Kill Bill," the much-anticipated Quentin Tarantino martial arts action-adventure film, as two movies, the first to open in the fall. Miramax will in effect be taking a three-hour film with a 200-page script and turning it into a serial.

Quote:
Harvey Weinstein, a co-founder of Miramax, which is financing the film, said in an interview on Monday that the first installment would be in theaters on Oct. 10. The second release date is in still being negotiated, but it could be two to six months later, he said.

Quote:
To many in Hollywood, the decision will come as a surprise. Mr. Weinstein, who in Hollywood is known as "Harvey Scissorhands," after the title character in the movie "Edward Scissorhands," has a reputation for forcing directors to cut both costs and the lengths of their movies. Mr. Tarantino spent 155 days shooting the film, well more than planned and longer than usual for most films.

Quote:
But Mr. Weinstein said Mr. Tarantino was something of a special case. The popularity of his violent yet original 1994 film, "Pulp Fiction," helped put Miramax on the map and generated an abundance of cash to help the studio bankroll other movies.

Quote:
"Miramax is the house Quentin Tarantino built," Mr. Weinstein said. And because of this director`s stature he was granted "carte blanche," Mr. Weinstein added.

Quote:
"Kill Bill`` is Mr. Tarantino`s first foray into action filmmaking. His limited body of work also includes the equally violent yet critically praised "Reservoir Dogs."

Quote:
When Mr. Tarantino first approached Mr. Weinstein about doing "Kill Bill" several years ago, it was with the condition that he be allowed to film the whole 200-page script that he had written. When Mr. Weinstein visited the set in its last month of shooting late last year, Mr. Tarantino said in a statement, Mr. Weinstein brought up the idea of splitting it in two.

Quote:
No decision was made at the time although Mr. Tarantino shot two opening-credit sequences, he said. Mr. Weinstein said it was not until he visited Los Angeles three weeks ago, when Mr. Tarantino showed him more than an hour and a half of the film, that the two decided on the two-film approach.

Quote:
"Kill Bill" is the story, told in chapters, of the world`s deadliest female assassin, who survives being shot on her wedding day and, after five years in a coma, seeks revenge on the man who tried to kill her. The film`s samurai-style fight sequences were filmed largely in China and take place in everything from a nightclub to a snow-covered garden to a suburban home.

Quote:
"There were no obstacles involved in splitting up `Kill Bill` at all because I`ve always designed the movie, thought about the film, as malleable in any number of versions," Mr. Tarantino said in his statement. That includes different versions for Asia, America and Europe.
The serial approach to "Kill Bill" has parallels to the making of the second and third installments of the "Matrix" series and "The Lord of The Rings" trilogy, which were filmed as one story but divided into parts and have been released on a staggered schedule. But those films were conceived as multipart releases; "Kill Bill" was not.

Quote:
Despite the success of the "Matrix" and the "Lord of the Ring" franchises, Miramax`s decision carries risks, given the box-office figures for a number of sequels, prequels and serials. Several have been disappointments this summer, including "Charlie`s Angels: Full Throttle," which received heavy publicity and generally favorable reviews as an enjoyable romp but which still failed to attract crowds. The serial films that have done well at the box office, like the "Matrix" series, have had built-in audiences already interested in the story. "Kill Bill," on the other hand, is from Mr. Tarantino`s original screenplay.

Quote:
What Miramax and Mr. Tarantino are betting on is that the director`s avid fan base and the pent-up interest in "Kill Bill" — which has taken almost a decade to make and is Mr. Tarantino`s fifth movie — will pack theaters not once, but twice. Still Mr. Weinstein said he was worried about overselling this film, calling it "just a fun B-movie."

Quote:
The question is: Fun for whom? "Kill Bill," not unlike other films that Mr. Tarantino has made, is intensely violent. That will limit the people who can see it, particularly the younger action-film audience that studios covet. In one spectacular fight in the "House of Blue Leaves" nightclub, nearly 100 people are killed, according to one person who worked on the set in China. Much has been made of the notion that Mr. Tarantino wanted the blood to be a particularly vibrant red.

Quote:
"Tarantino is something of an innovator who takes audiences into different realms," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a Los Angeles company that analyzes box-office returns.


Great - so the film will be different for US, European and Asian markets - presumably that now means that there will be 3 variants each of 2 films released in, say 3 different region DVDs, so that will be . . . . . a lot of DVDs to buy to get the whole picture, so to speak.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 16th July 2003, 19:02

All this messing around by making three different versions has now p*ssed me off to no end. The money isn`t a problem for me (UGC Unlimited card), but I was looking forward to seeing a complete Tarantino film this October. The question that bothers me is why is it being split up if it is only three hours long. That means the two parts are only 90 minutes long, which nowadays is can be quite unsatisfying, especially since this film should have a lot of character work.

I guess we`ll have to wait until more details are released before we get too hot headed though.

I think Quentin had less input on this than it has been reported...that money-grabbing Weinstein would really have been the driving force, I guess.

--
Rik Booth
My DVD Profiler Collection
My YMDb Top 20 Films

F*ck it. Click here to read the script.

Does that seem worthy of a two film release?

that sounds a s*** idea really...

i dont know if the studio has released anything else in a serial format but i cant help thinking the studio has just decided upon this to follow a trend like was set with Lotr and now the 2 Matrix films...

just to say `hey we have an epic, 2 film release now` as well, we`re in the same league`...theres no need

I agree, this doesn`t sound like a good idea (film-wise, that is). `Kill Bill` was never designed to be split into two movies (not even Harvey Scissorhands could conjure up that lie by this point), and so it seems a bit like taking, say, `The Godfather Part II`, chopping it roughly in half, serving up the first bit and then demanding the same amount of cash to see the rest. It is jumping on a trend (with focus on jumping) with cliff-hanger films, but unless Quentin pulls out a slick ending on part 1 quick, audiences are going to feel so cheated, it`ll make `Reloaded` look like the world`s most satisfying piece of entertainment in comparison. It’s mindblowingly money-grabbing that the studios, when ticket prices are at their most ridiculously large in major cities, that they choose to release two little movies as opposed to one big one. Incidentally, what exactly are Miramax thinking, that audiences won`t watch a 200 minute film? Remember the two biggest films in the history of the universe have been 3-hour plus mega-epics; or that they`ll create a mini-franchise out of Tarantino`s latest offering? Cynical, indeed, but giving it a word seems to be too much credit, I think I`ll wait for the DVD(s).

--Mike

Hmm, not sure I like the title of this thread really..... :/

I`m not keen on the idea either of shelling out twice to see what we could see once. I may not bother going to see it because I`ll know I`ll likely want more, and those of us without a cinema pass have to pay again. I want to be exhilerated in one go and not wait around 8 weeks.

Then there are the DVD releases which from all accounts will be different again.

Quote:
But not content with orchestrating just this quick-fire double-bill, Tarantino and his financing studio Miramax Films are also currently working on special Asian versions of both films. These localised editions will be a little longer and more graphic in their sword-wielding, streetfighting carnage, in keeping with the Hong Kong and Japanese action genre traditions that inspired Tarantino to write and direct Kill Bill as a samurai revenge vehicle for Uma Thurman.

I hope there aren`t three versions of the film coming out, but then you can never tell where money`s concerned, can you?

Quote:
In effect, four different films are now being prepared for release built from the same thousand rolls of footage that Tarantino shot for around $55m on prolonged location in China, Japan Mexico and California from his 212-page screenplay. The rapidity with which these finished films will now be rolled out across the globe - partly to ensure that pirate copies don't beat them to the punch - is unprecedented, outpacing even this year's two Matrix sequels.

Quote:
"We are blazing a new trail here" affirmed Miramax Films chief operating officer Rick Sands, who says the final decision to split the story at its natural break-point halfway through was made by Tarantino and Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein after a Los Angeles screening of the footage assembly three weeks ago.

Quote:
While Sands says that the initial October 10th date has been locked in, together with an international schedule that should see the film released in 85%-90% of the world's markets within three to four weeks, although the domestic opening date for Volume 2 has not been finalised. "They will be fairly close together. Not five or six months apart but sooner than that. Maybe as soon as eight weeks depending on what else is being released."

Quote:
Not that any were heard grumbling about the additional commitment or the essentially all-or-nothing proposition. Chung Tae Won, president of Korean distributor Taewon said he was more than happy to double up: having two Tarantino films at reasonable lengths is better than one at three hours.

Quote:
Moreover, as Sands himself puts it, distributors, like Miramax, will all being enjoying "several more bites of the apple" when it comes to ancillary markets. Both volumes of Kill Bill will warrant their own DVD release, to be followed up by a special double-pack sometime thereafter. And the number of opportunities to make a bigger killing in both free and pay-television has increased exponentially.

Quote:
Miramax's decision earlier this year to sign a long-term deal with Hong Kong-based content provider Celestial Pictures, giving it a swathe of video and video-on-demand rights to numerous titles within the renowned Shaw Brothers library, also makes extra sense now.

Quote:
Included within that 760-title catalogue, the legacy of Hong Kong`s famed filmmaking impresario, is the largest collection of Chinese films in the world including seminal works like The One-Armed Swordsman, Come Drink With Me and The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin. These, along with the films of Bruce Lee, Godzilla and Japanese anime, were the cinematic touchstones that spurred Tarantino while making his homage. With two Kills Bills in the offing, one can just imagine the packaging possibilities to come.

I`ll wait and see.

Anil
_____________________________________________________________
Site Reviewer
DVD Reviewer
My YMDB Top 20

This item was edited on Thursday, 17th July 2003, 10:53