Warner Bros. has evidently found 17 minutes of lost footage from Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic “2001: A Space Odyssey” in a Kansas salt-mine vault, according to Forgotten Silver (via Slash Film).
Douglas Trumbull (the film’s special photographic effects supervisor) revealed the exciting news at a recent screening of “2001” in Toronto. Trumbull said he wasn’t sure what the studio plans to do with the footage, which was found in pristine, “perfectly preserved” condition and is considered an important piece of movie history.
According to its IMDB page, “2001’s” original running time was 160 minutes when it debuted in 1968. Kubrick subsequently removed 19 minutes, and it’s presumed that this was the footage that was discovered in Kansas.
Kubrick reportedly cut the footage from “2001” because he felt it created pacing issues. The footage includes some additional footage of the “Dawn of Man” sequence, a scene in which Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) searched for a replacement antenna part in storage, a scene where HAL severs radio communication between the “Discovery” and Frank Poole’s (Gary Lockwood) pod, as well as shots of Poole’s space walk before he is killed.
Trumbull and David Larson have spent years working on the documentary “2001: Beyond the Infinite — The Making of a Masterpiece,” which the studio has reportedly decided against moving forward with due to rights issues and other financial concerns.
Trumbull’s presentation featured never-before-seen images that will be included in his and Larson’s upcoming behind-the-scenes photo book, though it’s unclear if those images were from the found footage or not.
