Summit Entertainment released Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman’s Fair Game in cinemas in 2010 and was gone faster than it arrived.
Naomi Watts and Sean Penn led the film about the scandal when the Bush Administration outed the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Reviews were respectable but hardly exciting and it ended up with just $24 million worldwide on a $22 million budget.
So much for that one would think, but Liman told Indiewire this week he was never fully satisfied with his original cut, calling it a ‘thorn in my side’ and now he’s gone back and made some changes with the help of Academy Award-winning editor Stephen Mirrione:
“Sean [Penn] had things going on in his personal life when we were making the film, impacting his performance. What he considered a genius performance and what I considered a genius performance were not necessarily the same. You can’t necessarily corral genius on set, but you can do it in the editing room.
The film is gut-wrenching and more emotionally satisfying [now]. Like Professor Ford standing up in front of the Brett Kavanaugh freight train, it’s a story about citizens standing up to the president and coming forward, confronting overwhelming power. At its heart, it’s about the consequences involved in trying to speak truth to power.”
The new cut of Fair Game will be released on digital platforms from October 23rd and Netflix on November 1st.
