When Paramount hired Darren Aronofsky to helm a big-budget adaptation of Noah, we were hoping the filmmaker would be given free reign, but money talks, so to protect their investment, the studio had other plans. As reported on last fall, they set out to screen different cuts of the film to both secular and Christian audiences and now, with a few weeks left until release, we have word on what we’ll see come next month.
In an extensive profile over at The Hollywood Reporter, Aronofsky reveals that, thankfully, it’s his 2 hour and 12 minute cut that’ll be arriving in March and that it went unseen by test audiences. “They tried what they wanted to try, and eventually they came back,” he says, assuaging a bit of our fears. “My version of the film hasn’t been tested … It’s what we wrote and what was greenlighted.” In a world of post-production fixing, Aronofsky also says, “I’ve never reshot a frame, and I think that’s very odd on big-budget movies. We’re meticulous. We come from independent film, with limited resources.”
When it comes to what we can actually expect from the movie, the director says, “We wanted to smash expectations of who Noah is. The first thing I told Russell [Crowe] is, ‘I will never shoot you on a houseboat with two giraffes behind you.’ … You’re going to see Russell Crowe as a superhero, a guy who has this incredibly difficult challenge put in front of him and has to overcome it.” One can certainly glean that from the marketing thus far and you can see more of it below, in a batch of character posters, also featuring Ray Winstone, Jennifer Connelly and Logan Lerman.
Noah arrives on March 28th.
Are you happy that Aronofsky’s cut got through?