Producers respond to Babylon A.D. story

Yesterday, we reported that the upcoming Vin Diesel movie Babylon A.D. was being cut by 20th Century Fox from a running time of 160 minute running time to 90 minutes.

Today producers are denying the story, saying that the movie’s running time will be and has always been around an hour and forty minutes and that audiences will be getting the entire vision of director Mathieu Kassovitz.

In a post about the film on their MySpace blog, the production company said, “The last days have been busy with news about the length and the rating of Babylon AD. I always find it amazing to see rumors grow from other rumors or misunderstanding. Therefore I think the time is good to give you some updates.

“Babylon AD has never had a 2h 40min cut. This rumor came from a joke Mathieu did in front of some journalists last September. Apparently some of them didn’t understand it. … The approximate length of the film is 1h40min, and this is what has been delivered to our partner, FOX. So I can reassure you, FOX is not chopping up the film and cutting 70 [minutes], like I read on Rotten Tomatoes! :-)”

The blog post added that the film was always designed to be PG-13. “The truth is Fox, like any other studio, will have their final cut on their territories, and Mathieu Kassovitz has his on the European ones. So there will naturally be a few differences between the two versions.”

Teaser trailers for the SF movie, starring Vin Diesel, are in the works. “A French teaser should be released on the Web quite soon!” the blog reported.