Ethan Hawke begs Antoine Fuqua to release five-hour cut of ‘The Magnificent Seven’
Over six years since the remake of The Magnificent Seven was released, one of the film’s main stars, Ethan Hawke, is still pushing for the fabled five-hour cut to be released.
Entitled the #ReleasetheFuquaCut, Hawke’s personal campaign has been rumbling on since the film was first released, and now Hawke has revealed that he’s been pleading with director Antoine Fuqua to drop his extended cut for years.
“In some ways, I see all his films [as] a collective scream against authority,” Hawke told The Hollywood Reporter when discussing his past collaborations with Fuqua. “[It’s] 107 [degrees] in Louisiana and there were more studio execs than our 100-person cast. He just put his head down and made his movie. I still beg him to release the five-hour cut of that film.”
Notably, the 2016 flick was a close remake of John Sturges’s classic, and alongside Hawke, it starred Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Peter Sarsgaard, and Haley Bennett.
A fan of the 1960 original when growing up, Fuqua set himself the task of remaking the epic Western after watching the film with his grandmother as a child. Notoriously though, he was forced to “compromise” on this labour of love project and cut the film down to a PG-13 rating.
Interestingly, of Ethan Hawke securing his role in the film, Fuqua revealed to IndieWire that the actor “cornered” him to get a role.
“I ran into Ethan because he was hosting an Equalizer screening here in New York,” the director explained. “And he literally grabbed me and put me against the wall and said,’ I’m in that movie. It’s called Magnificent Seven. I know Denzel [Washington] is doing the one, so there’s six more to go. And if I’m not in it, our friendship’s over.’”
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