Filmmaker James Gray has revealed that there was studio interference in his 2019 movie Ad Astra.
The movie was compared, by Gray himself, to Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. He directed the movie, and co-wrote it with Ethan Gross. The two had met at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in the late 1980s.
The Brad Pitt-led movie featured a story about a mission to ensure mankind’s survival that spanned the entire solar system. It set out to be the most realistic depiction of space travel ever put to film, noting how unbelievably difficult it really is, and how hostile the environments are to humans. After some poor test screenings, the studio stepped in and ordered extensive reshoots.
The finished article was lauded by some critics, but failed to connect with more general audiences. Gray had previously revealed that the finished movie was not his cut, and that he had been excluded from the editing room.
In a recent interview in Cannes to promote his latest film Paper Tiger, Gray gave more details:
“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. You get into discussions and debates, there’s a studio, then the studio [Fox] got sold to Disney. You get caught in that stuff. The movie was $80 million, Paper Tiger was $15 million. 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.”
Speaking of the studio version of Ad Astra vs. his planned cut, Gray said:
“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.”
Ad Astra has started to find an audience on streaming, and always threatens to get a rewatch.
