James Gray Says It Would Be “Thrilling” To Do Director’s Cut Of Brad Pitt-Led Sci-Fi Pic ‘Ad Astra’ After Being “Taken Away” By Studio

Acclaimed filmmaker James Gray has a new crime world film making the rounds, “Paper Tiger,” after its worldwide debut at the Cannes Film Festival, and with that comes a slew of press interviews with the director. In one of those chats, Gray revealed that with his sci-fi film “Ad Astra,” the studio ended up releasing a much longer version of the Brad Pitt than he had originally wanted, and the director seems to indicate that he didn’t get the kind of creative control you’d expect for someone at his level/status in the industry. While talking up the idea of tackling a director’s cut, which would be shorter than the original version.

“I control everything completely on this [‘Paper Tiger’] and, actually, I didn’t on ‘Ad Astra.’ That film was taken away from me. That’s not my cut of the movie,” he said. “You get into discussions and debates, there’s a studio, then the studio [20th Century Fox] got sold to Disney. You get caught in that stuff. The movie was $80 million, ‘Paper Tiger’ was $15 million,” Gray told Brut during Cannes (via Variety). Adding with his brand of industry bluntness, “I like to work on that scale because I don’t think it’s productive for people to just change your movie around and you get the blame anyway.”

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Gray goes on to give some minor insights into the differences between the two cuts, including his version being 12 minutes shorter than the theatrical cut. “It would have been a very different movie…It would be 12 minutes shorter. I’m the only director who makes a shorter director’s cut. I hope someday I’ll do it. I mean, it’s obviously not up to me, but I would love to do it; it would be thrilling for me.”

If you aren’t aware of the project, “Ad Astra” was sort of a sci-fi spin on Joseph Conrad‘s dark journey novel “Heart of Darkness” (his work also inspired the Francis Ford Coppola Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now“) and had been released just before COVID-19 put a bunch of movies and movie theater patronization on ice for a good chunk of time. But still, sadly, despite the critical praise the film got at the time, the Gray flick only managed to earn $127.6 million on a reported budget of $80 million (that doesn’t include marketing costs, which you could estimate in the range of $80-100 million, given the budget and Pitt’s involvement).

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Feel free to watch Gray’s interview with Brut below and get ready for the highly anticipated release of “Paper Tiger,” as we wait for the film’s distributor, NEON, to give the film an official release date and teaser trailer. Also, The Playlist reviewed the 1980s-set crime flick starring Miles Teller, Adam Driver, and Scarlett Johansson, as part of our extensive Cannes coverage.