By When you get a director like Darren Aronofsky you know he has an artistic vision for whatever he’s working on, and you’d think a studio would trust that vision after the years of relentless praise heaped onto his movies. Not so much. After some poor test screenings of early cuts of Noah it appears the director and Paramount are not seeing eye to eye in the editing room.
The film received some troubling responses in test screenings of various cuts in New York (largely Jewish), Arizona (mainly Christian) and Orange County, CA (general public). This has led Paramount to request some changes to the film and Aronofsky to dismiss them out of hand according to THR. Evidently the film does some rewriting of the story, which has both the Christian and Jewish audience not digging it and the general public on the outs as well. Paramount reps, putting a good spin on it, say that Aronofsky is going through a “normal preview process” and the result will be “one version of the movie that Darren is overseeing.”
While focus testing is not really something I approve of for editing a film, this could be a case where Aronofsky might want to take another look. If multiple audiences from around the country and making up different demographics are having issues with his film then their may actually be a problem with it. Great auteurs know their vision and when to take some advice.
[via THR]