UPDATE: According to The LA Times, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street will now open on Christmas Day, which just barely qualifies it for this year’s Oscar race.
One of the most anticipated films (hopefully) coming out later this year is Martin Scorsese’s latest project, The Wolf of Wall Street, starring his constant collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio. I say “hopefully” because today, via First Showing, we’ve learned that Paramount is considering delaying the film due to a couple of issues that may see the film released in late December or possibly even next year.
Their first problem is that the current cut of the film runs 180 minutes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see this as a problem at all. Who wouldn’t be willing to sit through a three hour movie directed by the one and only Martin Scorsese? The more Marty you can get, the better, I always say. However, they are currently looking at ways to shorten the film before it hits theaters.
The other issue is that the film currently contains material that would likely get it an NC-17 rating, which is something that Paramount obviously wants to avoid. We know from his past films (Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, The Departed) that Scorsese doesn’t shy away from violence, but as to what he could put into a film about the rise and fall of a stockbroker that could be so bad as to earn such a rating, we can only guess.
If the film is not ready by its November release date, the logical thing to do is just to bump it into December where is would still qualify for this year’s Oscars. It’s already sitting on many peoples’ lists of strong Oscar candidates, which is to be expected given the director. Plus, the only trailer we’ve seen makes it look pretty damn good.
Hopefully Paramount will be able to sort this out. If they need to trim it down a little to get an R rating, that’s fine, but hopefully they’ll do it in such a way that we’ll get the most complete version of the film as possible.
The Wolf of Wall Street is still currently scheduled to hit theaters on November 15th, but we’ll certainly let you know if that does end up changing.