Announced this week, Mike Flanagan‘s 3-hour director’s cut of Doctor Sleep will first be offered up digitally on January 21, and it will then be released onto Blu-ray (and included as a Blu-ray disc with the film’s 4K UHD release) on February 4. Speaking with Collider, Flanagan teases what we can expect from the 30-minutes of brand new footage headed our way.
“[Warner Bros] really let us do this right – it’s a finished, complete, fully polished new cut of the movie,” Flanagan explained to the site. “There is new material throughout the whole film. Some of it is brand new stuff that was never included in the theatrical cut, and there’s also a handful of extended (or altered) scenes as well.”
He continued, “There are some big new scenes, for sure. I don’t want to spoil any of that, but I can say that there is new material throughout (including in the final act at the Overlook). Some of my favorite stuff involved Young Danny and Wendy (there’s some terrific material with Alex Essoe that I’m thrilled is restored here), and will be familiar to fans of the book. There’s also a fair amount of new stuff involving young Abra in the film’s first act, learning about her shine, and how it affects her parents.”
“And there are some surprises I definitely won’t spoil here.”
In Flanagan’s own words, the “Director’s Cut” presents a “more literary” version of the film, with an entirely different structure; this cut breaks the film up into chapters, like a novel.
You can read Flanagan’s full statement about the Director’s Cut over on Collider.
