Harvey Weinstein tells Deadline Hollywood Daily why ‘Grindhouse’ failed and says that, yes, those “missing reels” will surface.

Deadline Hollywood Daily has an exclusive interview with Harvey Weinstein about the disappointing opening Grindhouse suffered this weekend. The double-feature from directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez earned a meager $12 million, coming in fourth at the box office behind Ice Cube‘s family romp Are We Done Yet? (ooh, that’s gotta hurt).

Weinstein said his company, The Weinstein Co., is considering breaking up the flicks in the United States as two feature-length films with additional footage. The company already intends to release the films — Rodriguez‘s Planet Terror and Tarantino‘s Death Proof — separately in Europe.

Both movies had purposely “missing” reels that contained sex scenes and there’s been speculation as to whether the scenes were really filmed and if so, would they’d be included in the DVD release. Weinstein said if the films are separated and rereleased, “We’ll be adding those ‘two missing reels’ that’s talked about in the movie.”

The interview goes on to discuss why Grindhouse did so poorly. Weinstein said the major factor was that the length, which was 3 hours and 12 minutes, kept people away. That’s difficult to digest considering that today’s moviegoer is used to sitting through 3 hours of a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings installment and both of those franchises were huge box office successes.

It’s obvious by now that opening an experimental movie like Grindhouse, which supposedly people in the Midwest and the South had no idea even what a “grindhouse” movie is, on Easter weekend was a risky move — one that apparently did not pay off, considering the movie’s total budget (including promotion costs) came to around $100 million. That’s a huge loss for the studio.

On top of that, The Weinstein Co. didn’t give the film to actual Grindhouses or even the submit it to the Grindhouse Film Festival, which would have not only been appropriate but would have possibly generated more interest in the film.

Looks like Grindhouse will have a better life as a DVD … or two.

You can read the Geeks of Doom review of the movie HERE.

Source: Deadline Hollywood Daily