Watching the ‘teaser’ for Vin Diesel’s upcoming Babylon A.D. (click here to download the WMV) I wasn’t sure if I was looking at a legit bunch of footage from a new film or a sweded version of Children Of Men. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, the flick stars Diesel, Michelle Yeoh and Gerard Depardieu, and is based on the French novel Babylon Babies. Reports peg the plot as such: A young woman has been genetically altered, possessing a virus that could kill the human race. A mercenary is hired to escort the woman from a post-apocalyptic Russia to New York City. They are accompanied by a nun.
Vin Diesel does not play the nun.
Originally meant for Kassovitz’s La Haine and Crimson Rivers lead Vincent Cassel, the film became Diesel’s big return, then went over schedule and budget. Fox’s February ’08 release was pushed to August of this year.
Now Twich is reporting that while European audiences will see the full cut of the film — which sounds bloated and overbearing at 160 minutes — in the UK and US Fox will release a version that runs only 90 minutes. 160 may be too long, but a 70-minute difference in the cuts? Yow. Is this another Ultraviolet in the making, where the full cut is unlikely to be any better than the chopped version, or could it be more along the lines of Dust Devil, where cuts will really make a difference? And since a film like this will see a full DVD release and profit, if it does at all, on disc, do stories like this even continue to shock?