A 4 Hour Braveheart Cut?

A strong contender for manliest movie of the 1990s was Braveheart.  It’s every inch the alpha movie and who could say no to even more?

Director Mel Gibson has told Collider the ‘kitchen sink’ assembly cut was about 3 hours and 45 minutes, which they cut to 2 hours, 48 minutes — not including credits. ‘So we lost almost an hour,’ Gibson said. ‘There’s almost an hour lying on the floor someplace, but I think it’s the right hour.’ Collider asked if there a lot of scenes that never saw the light of day. ‘Oh yeah,’ Gibson confirmed. ‘There’s literally an hour someplace. There’s an hour of stuff.’

Collider asked if anyone has ever approached him to do an extended cut. Here’s Gibson’s response:

“People have mentioned, ‘It’s a big deal, wooh.’ I don’t know, somebody — Fox or Paramount — want to finance that, go ahead. They want to dig up the footage, I’ll slap it back together. And then we’ll get Steve Rosenblum, who’s a great editor. I’ve worked with him since a couple of times. I think he’d be up for it. That was one of the highlights of his life, I think. That was a good flick.”