Sucker Punch director Zack Snyder says he’s still planning to release a Director’s Cut.
During an interview with Letterboxd, the filmmaker confirmed that while he still hasn’t gotten around to it, the director’s cut of Sucker Punch is still on the cards.
“I’ve never gotten around to doing the director’s cut,” he said. “I still plan to at some point.”
Quite when it will appear remains to be seen – Snyder has been planning a director’s cut of Sucker Punch since at least 2021.
The project was first announced following the release of Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League.
However, little has been mentioned since.
Sucker Punch stars Emily Browning as Babydoll – a young woman who retreats into a fantasy world to escape the reality of being confined to a mental institution.
Other inmates appear as strong female warriors throughout her dream-like fantasies, and the cast includes Abbie Cornish, Jenna Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Carla Gugino, and Oscar Isaac.
Although the film’s ending offers a certain closure to Babydoll’s story, it sounds as though Snyder had a very different ending in mind. It was ultimately changed at the request of the studio… but he hopes to restore this version in the director’s cut.
“In the original ending, when Babydoll is in the chair in the basement with Blue – she’s already been lobotomized – when the cop shines the light on her, the set breaks apart and she stands up and she sings a song on stage,” he said.
Ultimately, the song was cut,
“She sings, ‘Ooh, Child, things are gonna get easier.’ Blondie, and all the people that have been killed, join in, and it’s the idea that in a weird way, even though she’s lobotomized, she’s kind of stuck in this infinite loop of euphoric victory.”
Quite a statement, but ultimately it’s not what the studio wanted.
“It’s weirdly not optimistic and optimistic at the same time. That’s kind of what the tone was at the end. We tested it, and the studio thought it was too weird, so we changed it. You’ll get to see it at some point, I’m sure. I hope.”
Sucker Punch received generally negative reviews and was a box office bomb, earning just $89.7 million worldwide with a budget of $83 million.
Many believe its failure could have been due to the late restructuring of the film – Snyder was forced to cut many pivotal scenes in order to secure a PG-13 rating, despite his initial vision to make Sucker Punch an R-rated movie.
“[Sucker Punch] was the first time where I really faced, like, a true radical restructuring of the film for it to be more commercial,” Snyder told Vanity Fair in an interview in 2021. “There is a director’s cut of that movie that has yet to be released. I’ll say that out loud.”
Still, Sucker Punch is over a decade out from its original release at this point, and I can’t help thinking a director’s cut just isn’t really a priority.
Want to read more about comic book movies? Check out why Jack Quad won’t be in Fantastic Four as well as whether Wonder Woman 3 is still in the works.
