Nikki Sermak January 3rd, 2023 - 10:04 AM
Damien Chazelle’s Babylon became one of the biggest box office bombs in 2022. Opening over Christmas weekend, the four-day weekend made only $5.3 million despite the production budget being north of $80 million.
Box office pundits believe the failure happened because of the 189-minute runtime. Babylon comes in at three hours and nine minutes long, but Chazelle has come out to say he has a much shorter and scrappier version of the film on his iPhone.
In a recent Q&A with Entertainment Weekly, Chazelle revealed he prepped for Babylon by filming a two-hour film cut in his backyard.
During a recent Los Angeles Q&A for the movie (via Entertainment Weekly), Chazelle revealed that he prepared for “Babylon” by filming a two-hour cut of the movie in his backyard. The La La Land Oscar winner shot the project on his iPhone. This two-hour version of Babylon only starred two actors: Diego Calva, who plays assistant-turned-producer Manny Torres in the film, and Olivia Hamilton, who stars as director Ruth Adler and happens to be Chazelle’s wife.
“It’s a very tight, two-hour version of the entire movie, [filmed] on an iPhone in our backyard,” Chazelle said.
“We rehearsed the whole movie in his backyard, only Olivia, Damien and I,” Calva added. “It was a very uncommon kind of situation.”
Babylon is set during the 1920s as Hollywood transitions from silent films to talkies. The shift dramatically affects the lives of several characters, from Brad Pitt’s silent film icon Jack Conrad to Margot Robbie’s up-and-comer Nellie LaRoy, Calva’s Manny, Jovan Adepo’s jazz trumpet player Sidney Palmer and more. Critics have been divided on the film, with Variety’s Peter Debruge calling the film “exuberantly messy” in his review.
“Chazelle has essentially orchestrated a loud, vulgar live-action cartoon of a film, and while it’s exhilarating at times to witness the sheer virtuosity of his staging, the performances are all over the place,” Debruge wrote. “Babylon sorely lacks a point of view.”
“Babylon” is now playing in theaters nationwide.
