Scoop: Arjun Reddy’s 3-Hour Length To Be Increased, Footage To Be Added
The phenomenal Telugu hit Arjun Reddy which is being unanimously hailed as a game-changer not only for Telugu cinema but Indian cinema per se, is about to get bigger.
Unmindful of the staggering length of the film—it stands at 3 hours and 2 minutes—the film’s bowled-over team has decided to restore some of the film’s edited footage into the narrative.In fact there was pre-release pressure on the film’s team to cut down the length of Arjun Reddy as a 3-hour product was seen to be not multiplex-friendly.
“So in principle, we’re planning to add not subtract to the film’s length.We had to sacrifice about 40 minutes of footage on the editing table. Believe me, every moment of what we shot was vital to the story. Every frame that we left out was a bit of our life abandoned for the sake of a tighter narrative,” says the the film’s leading man Vijay Devarakonda who has acquired an iconic status with Arjun Reddy.
Now director Sandeep Vanga intends to put at least some of the relinquished footage back into the film.
Says Vijay, “Since the audience has accepted the entire film and its unusual playing time we are enthused into putting back the moments that we had to wrench out for the sake of narrative economy. So yes, in principle we are doing a director’s cut of Arjun Reddy so soon after the release because we believe what was left out is important to Arjun Reddy’s story.”