Back on January 26 I mentioned how The Weinstein Co. was looking to edit this weekend’s Best Picture front-runner The King’s Speech for a PG-13 rating. The reason for the R-rating, as you will see in the video included to the right, was due to the utterance of the word “fuck” 15 times along with a slew of other words in the midst of a therapeutic exercise. The language wasn’t directed at anyone as much as it featured the film’s lead getting a certain amount of frustration off his chest. Well, that frustration will be a little less impactful going forward.
Following the news Weinstein head honcho, Harvey Weinstein, wanted to find a way to get the film in theaters in a PG-13 format director Tom Hooper told EW, “I wouldn’t support cutting the film in any way. I think we looked at whether it’s possible to bleep out the fucks and stuff, but I’m not going to actually cut that part.” According to The Los Angeles Times that’s exactly what’s happened.
“The contentious F-words have been muted out,” writes Nicole Sperling as the MPAA and National Association of Theatre Owners announced the PG-13 rating as well as the fact they had waived a rule requiring distributors to fully withdraw the original version of the film from theaters for 90 days before replacing it with an alternative.
MPAA’s interim president and CEO Bob Pisano was quoted saying, “The Weinstein Co. has undertaken a commitment to ensure, through a revised advertising campaign, that it will be clear to consumers that a newly rated version of this film is coming to theaters near them. In this case a waiver is justified.”
So just when will this new cut hit theaters? It sounds like it will happen almost immediately. With only two days to go until the Oscars and The King’s Speech primed to win Best Picture and most likely take home the largest number of statuettes I would think Weinstein would want the more accessible cut in theaters as soon as possible. As a result, yes, the R-rated version will be removed from theaters at the same time.
Previously Harvey Weinstein said, “The British numbers are huge because the rating lets families see the movie together. Tom and I are trying to find a unique way to do this that keeps his vision of the movie.”
The R-rated version of The King’s Speech has racked up over $106 million to date as one of five of this year’s Best Picture nominees to crack the century mark. The film is currently screening in 2,386 theaters this weekend, 300 more than last weekend when it added an additional $6.5 million to its tally. Inglourious Basterds is currently the Weinstein’s highest grosser at $120.5 million. It will be interesting to see where The King’s Speech ends up, especially considering it’s already slated for an April 19 DVD and Blu-ray release.
