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If there's one thing that superfans love, it's an alternate cut of their favorite movie. I'm certainly not immune to this either. My favorite version of X-Men: Days of Future Past is the Rogue Cut, and I'll pick the 2010 restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis any day over the 1984 colorized version from Giorgio Moroder (sorry, Giorgio). 

Now, a Gremlins fan page called the Gremlins Museum has reportedly come into possession of an early cut of the Joe Dante film. The Gremlins Museum made a Facebook post where they were sent a "long-rumored Gremlins rough cut, a true grail for Gremlins fans." It's not currently known what exactly is on the tape, as the Gremlins Museum sent it off to get digitized, but the post reads that "we'll know next week" what the tapes actually contain. The post also states that "[director] Joe [Dante] has mentioned in past interviews that this version runs roughly 160 minutes, compared to the final 106-minute theatrical cut. Hopefully, a lot of additional material. Of interest, this assembly was made approx 6.5 months before the film premiered." As a note, I wasn't able to find interviews where Joe Dante stated that the assembly cut of Gremlins was 160 minutes long. 

To be clear, an "assembly cut" for a movie is the earliest cut, or edition, of it. You can think of it as a rough draft of a novel. An assembly cut is when the editor looks at all of the footage shot in a movie, cuts the footage down into individual scenes, and then arranges the scenes into narrative order, or however the story unfolds in the movie's screenplay. This is done so that the directors and producers can see how the film came out. The producers and director will provide notes to the editing team about how the film can be fine-tuned in the next cut of the film, and these suggestions might include taking out a particular scene, shortening a scene, or lingering on a specific shot for a few more frames.

An assembly cut is always going to be long, because the film hasn't yet been cut for suspense or other dramatic effect. For instance, Thelma Schoonmaker, the legendary editor and frequent collaborator of Martin Scorsese, has stated that the assembly cut of Killers of the Flower Moon "was about four hours" long. The final cut of Killers of the Flower Moon was a little under three and a half hours long. 

Anyways, you can stay up to date with the Gremlins Museum on Facebook to see what they'll find on the tapes. 

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