The MPAA in America has given Richard Donner's Superman II a "PG" certificate. The movie will contain more than an hour of footage that was never seen in the theatrical release. Essentially this is completely different movie to the one that is currently available.
Brief History
Richard Donner filmed Superman II back to back with Superman The Movie. He had completed 75% of the film and in order to get a Christmas release for STM he abandoned filming on SII, focusing on the original film. When waiting to reshoot SII he got a telgram from the producers informing him he was sacked from the production. Richard Lester took over the realms and refilmed 70% of Donner's footage. Some Donner footage remains in the current edition, namely all the footage of Gene Hackman and the whitehouse shots. Footage of Marlon Brando was exercised from the movie. This fall Superman II gets a total revamp and Donner's original vision comes to DVD. The film may be getting a brief theatrical run in the US.
Richard Lester directed about 70% of the current Superman II. He gets the full directorial credit for it but Richard Donner filmed a share of footage in that version. This new version is all the Donner footage they could find. Lester's remaining footage is less than 20% of the overall movie in the new cut. They had to use some Lester material to tie up stuff Donner did not have time to shoot in 1977 and 1978.
Original visions suck. I watched this version of Dune that was re-edited to be 'true to the books' or whatever and it *blew chunks*.
But hey, I'd like to see this merely because I liked those old Superman movies. Haha.
