For decades, horror & dark fantasy legend Clive Barker has lamented the harsh cuts made to his 1990 film Nightbreed at the insistence of studio execs who didn't understand his concept of monsters-as-heroes. Fans of the film (and its source novella Cabal) shared that same regret, wishing to see Barker's true vision realized on screen, and launched the online “Occupy Midian” campaign to push for a restoration of the director's epic original cut.
Word got out at this year's Comic-Con that their efforts have finally been rewarded, and now it's official: Shout! Factory and Morgan Creek Productions have just inked a deal to bring Barker's extended director's cut – The “Cabal Cut” – to DVD and Blu-ray in 2014. According to Barker himself, the new cut will contain over 45 minutes of previously unseen footage from his original version.
“I had a dream about the tribes of the moon,” Barker said. “They would live in a city called Midian and, though they were monsters of every shape and size, they would be the heroes of a movie called Nightbreed. However, when I made the movie, the studio was not comfortable with this inversion of the classic structure. They wanted the monsters to be simple-minded scare machines, while I wanted them to be the dark side of all of us, mysterious and misunderstood.”
Shout! Factory's horror-centric branch Scream Factory will oversee a multi-platform rollout of Nightbreed leading up to the physical DVD/Blu releases. The plan includes select theatrical screenings of “The Cabal Cut,” including one in Los Angeles this October with Barker himself present to talk about the film.
More details and dates will be revealed soon, so stay tuned!