Acclaimed Brad Pitt Sci-Fi Movie Was ‘Taken Away’ from Director: ‘That’s Not My Cut’

The director of an acclaimed Brad Pitt sci-fi movie says the film was ultimately taken away from him. While Ad Astra received positive reviews from critics, director James Gray says that’s ultimately not his cut of the film and that his version would have been “very different.”

Ad Astra was released in United States theaters in 2019. It stars Pitt as Roy Richard McBride, Tommy Lee Jones as H. Clifford McBride, Ruth Negga as Helen Lantos, Liv Tyler as Eve McBride, and Donald Sutherland as Colonel Thomas Pruitt, among others.

The synopsis for the movie reads, “Thirty years ago, Clifford McBride led a voyage into deep space, but the ship and crew were never heard from again. Now his son — a fearless astronaut — must embark on a daring mission to Neptune to uncover the truth about his missing father and a mysterious power surge that threatens the stability of the universe.”

What did James Gray say about his Ad Astra movie starring Brad Pitt?

Speaking at Cannes to promote his latest film, Paper Tiger, Gray said of Ad Astra, per Variety, “I control everything completely on [Paper Tiger] and, actually, I didn’t on Ad Astra. That film was taken away from me. That’s not my cut of the movie. You get into discussions and debates, there’s a studio, then the studio [20th Century Fox] got sold to Disney. You get caught in that stuff. The movie was $80 million. Paper Tiger was $15 million.

“…[Ad Astra] would have been a very different movie. It would be 12 minutes shorter. I’m the only director who makes a shorter director’s cut. I hope someday I’ll do it. I mean, it’s obviously not up to me, but I would love to do it — it would be thrilling for me.”

Despite this, critics generally liked Ad Astra, as the movie currently has an 83 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. Having said that, general audiences felt different, as it has a 40 percent score on the Popcornmeter.

Source: Comingsoon.net