So is old "scissorhands" himself Harvey Weinstein still adamant that he's going to cut the movie down by 20 minutes? Well, yes..but maybe not after he takes the feedback from a recent LA test screening of Joon-ho's cut into account. The most recent update comes directly from Joon-ho himself in an interview with Twitch.
"Some aspects are a little bit exaggerated. Some people misunderstood that there already exists a North American version with 20 minutes cut out. But that kind of version doesn’t exist. Officially the negotiation is still going on, and I’m trying my best to keep my own version and also the CJ people (the Korean investors/distributors) are trying to confirm the release date, the marketing plan and many other things they are still negotiating and the funny thing is once there did exist a 20-minute cut-out version, a Weinstein version of Snowpiercer, they had a screening of that version in New Jersey in July. Then CJ did another test screening of my original version in LA with a normal American audience, and with my version the response was much higher than the scores from the Weinstein version.”
Snowpiercer is set in a future where, after a failed experiment to stop global warming, an Ice Age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. A class system evolves on the train but a revolution brews.
Snowpiercer is an adaptation of the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige and is set for release sometime in 2014.