Already seen The Force Awakens 17 times and desperate to watch the extended cut at home while snuggling up to your everlastingly cute £130 BB-8 droid? Sadly, it's not going to happen after director JJ Abrams revealed that the home video release will be identical to the theatrical one.
There is good news, however: although an alternate version of the movie isn't planned for sofa-based popcornings, some additional footage scooped from the cutting room floor will be included on both the Blu-ray and DVD releases.
“There will be deleted scenes, but not an extended version,” Abrams told Entertainment Weekly. “With credits, the first cut was close to two hours and 50 minutes.” That's compared with two hours and 16 minutes for the eventual theatrical release – giving us at least 34 minutes of unseen goodness for detailed living room perusal.
“There’s a shot where Kylo Ren turns on his lightsaber, which was not in the movie,” Abrams revealed in a previous interview. “There were a bunch of things we ended up not using.”
The lack of an extended cut is a considerable surprise given Star Wars creator George Lucas' reputation for meddling with his masterpieces. Despite nearly a dozen different releases on myriad formats, only once – in 2004, as limited edition bonus discs – have the original theatrical cuts of the first three films been made available for home viewing. (And you can expect to pay £20 a pop for those versions now.)
There's no release date for the home releases as yet, but inevitably they're already available for pre-order.
