Dominik Dispels Myth Of 4-Hour ‘Jesse James’ Cut, But Says His Longer Version Is “Better”

There’s good news and bad news for fans of “The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford,” the 2007 Western from filmmaker Andrew Dominik starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck and featuring a gorgeous score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. While the film was a flop at the time at the box office— it made $15 million worldwide on a budget said to have been $30 million and made all of $3 million domestically— the film has since gone on to become a huge cult classic, routinely listed on many Best Films Of The Decade lists (including ours). Even Pitt has called the moody, atmospheric Western one of his favorite of his own films.

For years, there’s been talk of a legendary, longer, four-hour cut that’s in the vault somewhere. The film’s cinematographer Roger Deakins semi-recently lamented the loss of that cut, talking on his podcast in 2020, about how he thought the longer version was much better…

Now, Dominik himself had confirmed the existence of a longer cut in interviews before and had reiterated so again in an interview with Collider, which is the good news. The bad news is, it’s actually probably not four hours long, and as he’s suggested in the past, no one seems to be interested in releasing it.

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