Recut

Occasionally, a movie turns out good. Often, a movie turns out bad. Sometimes, a movie turns out good, but not quite good enough. That's where the concept of a Recut comes in.

Kinds of Recuts:
 * Director's Cut: The cut of the film the director 'approves of'. If the director didn't like the theatrical cut because they weren't allowed to cut the film the way they wanted, they may put scenes back in, take scenes out, fiddle with timing, change audio or various other things. This kind of Director's Cut is very common on DVD. Occasionally, the theatrical cut is the director's cut, because the director's perfectly happy with the theatrical cut.
 * Extended Cut: Identical to the Director's Cut, except not necessarily by the director, and not necessarily the director's original vision. Example: Peter Jackson considers the theatrical Lord of the Rings movies to be his director's cuts, but the Extended Editions were created (by him) to restore deleted scenes to the movie and develop Tolkien's world more on screen.
 * TV Cut: An edited version of the film. Basically, every movie shown on TV has been changed slightly (every time there's an ad break, the film fades to black) but often there are more significant changes. For instance, violence is often cut, swear words are covered up, and nudity may be removed. (See any Die Hard movie.) As well, they may be edited for time.
 * In-Flight Cut: A version of the film edited for viewing during an airline flight.  Similar to the TV Cut, but far more stringent.  In addition to cuts and dubs for language, violence and/or sexuality, all manner of other content may be removed, depending on the airline showing the film -- for example, removing anything to do with pork products from films sold to airlines from Muslim nations.  And for some strange reason, any scene which depicts anything at all, however minor, which negatively impacts an airplane -- even one on the ground -- will disappear from the film.

Beyond that, things can get very confusing. The inclusion of one or more Recuts is often one of the selling points of a Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition.

Anime

 * Dragon Ball Kai is a rare case of a recut of an entire televised series (in this case, Dragonball Z), cutting away the filler, remastering the show in HD and rerecording the dialogue with as many of the original voice actors as possible.

Comics

 * When Marvel Comics reprinted the original series of Elf Quest new pages had to be added by Wendy Pini to fit the total page count. Some of these were new episode titles and recaps, while others were new or expanded story pages. Most of the latter were included in subsequent reprints; due to Art Evolution it's usually not too hard to tell which. A few of the new episode titles were also included, causing some disruption to the original chaptering. Controversially, the series was also re-lettered with bigger ballons which obscured more of the original art and removed some special formatting. This was not corrected until the art was finally "remastered" with computer lettering and coloring, which is the version currently available on the official website.
 * Another reformatting took place when DC Comics reprinted the series in Manga-style volumes, requiring Pini to expand, contract or extend existing comic panels to fit the new page size. This version also included most of the additional art drawn for the Marvel version.
 * Anniversery trade paperbacks of famous series (ex. Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, etc.) will on occasion have extra content in them, or edits to the story itself. For example, Batman: The Long Halloween, included a scene that was cut from the original story due to page constraints. The Killing Joke was recolored, making the scenes darker and more muted, in contrast to its original, more garish colors.

Film
"Laurie: We made it. We made it!"
 * Supernova had an R-rated version released on video that was more violent and made the bad guy even more of a Complete Monster. These scenes can be viewed on the DVD in the Deleted Scene section.
 * There was a special showing of The Godfather trilogy on TV some years ago. Called The Godfather Saga, it clocked in at over twelve hours and showed the events in all three films in chronological order, adding scenes that were cut from the original theatrical releases. Whether this works or not is entirely up to you. The added stuff was released on DVD in the Deleted Scene section.
 * The horror film Needful Things was shown on TBS some years back with a sizeable chunk of added footage, most adding depth to the characters. This version has yet to be released in any format.
 * The Dune movie. The 1984 theatrical version was not director David Lynch's Director's Cut—the producers not only made him cut a lot of material from his script, they also cut a lot of scenes that had been shot out as well—but it's the only one he's very happy with. Then in 1988, an Extended Cut was made to be shown on TV, referred to as "The Alan Smithee Cut". It used deleted scenes, but reused more footage than Battlestar Galactica Classic. David Lynch hated it, demanding his name be removed from the writer and director credit. Then, in 1992, a San Francisco TV station made a mix of a cut between the original theatrical version of the movie and the Alan Smithee cut, which kept the new scenes but also put the violence back in. Finally, a cut known as the Extended Edition came out on DVD, which was a 177-minute edit of the Alan Smithee version. David Lynch is now a bitter arthouse director. Go figure.
 * Universal also did this for the Kevin Costner sci fi Waterworld. The Extended Cut originally appeared on ABC television in two parts that clocked in at two hours each (with commercials). It trimmed out the opening pee shot, the excess violence, and replaced most cusswords with "Slime!". It also reshuffled some of the order of events and added a ton of development of both world and characters, mostly for the Deacon and the atollers.
 * While we're on Kevin Costner, this also happened to Dances with Wolves. An Extended Cut was shown in Europe that adds practically an hour to the running time. While the focus on John Dunbar is lost, all the characters get a buttload of development. Also, the precise reason why the Army camp was deserted was explained. This has been released on DVD, and is the only way to get a widescreen version of the film without eBay.
 * Another Costner film that got this treatment was Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. Not much is added, but the connection between the Sheriff and the old crone is explained, and it is gross. This has also been released on DVD.
 * It's also the version available on the Netflix streaming service. Really, a much better film than the original...
 * Made infamous by George Lucas reworking the original Star Wars trilogy, resulting in the "Han Shot First" campaign.
 * He also did this to THX 1138. His Director's Cut is the only version available on DVD.
 * Peter Jackson also has done this. In The Frighteners, he removed some scenes to avoid an R-rating. It didn't work. One scene featured Johnny Bartlett's ghost and his Ax Crazy live girlfriend engaging in what can only be described as the weirdest foreplay ever. It features her . Another scene features a more family-friendly death scene for Jeffrey Combs' character that has been shown in the airline and television versions of the film. Both versions have been released on DVD, but the Director's Cut has a behind-the-scenes special that's actually longer than the film.
 * He has also done this to his remake of King Kong.
 * Bob Guccione's infamous Caligula exists in no fewer than ten cuts, a result of the gross amount of Executive Meddling that occured during the film's production and varying decency standards in the US and Europe.
 * Upon its initial release, Terry Gilliam's Brazil was recut, against Gilliam's wishes, to give it a happier ending. Gilliam's preferred cut was later given a theatrical release of its own; today, his version and the so-called "Love Conquers All version" are both available on DVD.
 * Ditto Blade Runner, which is now available in five versions: the Domestic and International Theatrical Cuts (both with voiceover by Harrison Ford and a happy ending—the Domestic version has about 30 seconds of violence from the International version trimmed off); the "Workprint" (a rough cut which preceded the theatrical cuts, notably put together before scoring); the "Director's Cut" (created with Ridley Scott's notes but without his actual involvement); and the newly released "Final Cut" (Ridley Scott's actual director's cut, complete with digital restoration—he wanted to just call it Blade Runner, but was overruled).
 * While we're on Ridley Scott, his film Kingdom of Heaven was released in its theatrical cut (which he hated), and in a multi-disc Director's Cut, with which director, film critics, and many viewers were much happier.
 * Legend was substantially cut and altered for its U.S. release in 1986 (this included an entirely different music score) -- the original U.K. cut wasn't available in the U.S. until 2002's DVD release (and was in fact believed lost until the one surviving print was found in 2000).
 * Another case of a Ridley Scott Recut is Alien. When Fox requested a "Director's Cut" for the Special Edition release, Scott felt that an extended cut would ruin the film's pacing, and instead opted for an alternate cut using several deleted scenes. The end result was a "Director's Cut" that was actually two minutes shorter than the original film.
 * Ridley Scott's Robin Hood lost at least twenty minutes of footage before its theatrical release, including a scene that created a major plot hole. The Director's Cut DVD release restores it all.
 * After nearly finishing production on Superman II, director Richard Donner was fired and replaced with Richard Lester, who reshot much of the film. The original theatrical cut is about 35% Donner footage and 65% Lester footage. In 2006, Richard Donner released his own cut of the film on DVD, which is composed of about 90% of his material, and makes use of rehearsal footage and screen tests to make up the parts he never got a chance to film properly.
 * Speaking of Superman and Richard Donner, the Director's Cut of the original film has also been released on DVD. This version adds some verisimilitude (sorry, couldn't resist) as well as some new scenes to the cut. Some of these scenes expand on the Kryptonian stuff in the film, as well a scene featuring little Lois seeing little Clark running at superspeed. Her parents are played by the actors from the original TV series.
 * This isn't just limited to theatrical movies. The Pilot Movie of Babylon 5 (called Babylon 5: The Gathering), when it first aired in 1993, was... not edited very well, to put it delicately. In 1998 the whole thing was re-edited from the ground up: deleted scenes were restored, embarrassing scenes were cut, the original audio of Laurel Takashima's dialogue was used, and the whole thing was re-scored by Christopher Franke. While it's still fairly cheap-looking, the result is a much more engaging film.
 * A similar thing was done in 2009 for the reissue of the Stargate SG-1 pilot movie, "Children of the Gods". Not only did the revised version clear up some at-the-time unfixed plot points (like how Apophis and his Jaffa departed through the Stargate in the beginning) and the motivation for Teal'c's Mook Face Turn, but also removed such cringe-inducing moments like the nudity scene or Carter's infamous "reproductive organs" line. This came about from series creator Brad Wright's growing dissatisfaction with the original version, particularly with the full frontal nudity which was rumored to have been forced on him by then-series owners Showtime.
 * The movie that launched the series also had this done. Some scenes added to the Extended cut of the film show remains of some Anubis guards buried near the gate when it's dug up in the beginning.
 * The Halloween films had many TV Cuts made:
 * During the filming of the sequel, John Carpenter shot more scenes for the ABC broadcast of the original to help it pad out the alotted time. These scenes don't do much.
 * The sequel itself has a few new things for the TV Cut. These include some alternate cuts of scenes, some scene and dialogue extensions, and a scene added to the end that takes place in the ambulance.


 * Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers has the most stunning example of this. Apparently, the film ran over time and budget, so the suits decided to take it over to see how they could screw it up. Their version is the Theatrical Cut. When the film was shown on TV, someone got a hold of the now infamous Producer's Cut. While the violence and cursing were trimmed, an assload of alternate takes and different opening narration were shown, and the entire last 20 minutes of the film is RADICALLY different from the Theatrical Cut. The main change is that the explanation for Michael's killing ways is altered: The Theatrical version offered a scientific reason, but the Producer's Cut says the reason is supernatural (which also explains why Michael is also growing bigger in each previous film. It's because his power is growing). It also shows a final scene with Dr. Loomis realizing that he has been cursed by Thorn. This was likely altered when Donald Pleasance died. An early trailer showed that the film was originally going to called "Halloween 666: The Curse of Michael Myers." This version is only available through bootleg video releases.
 * Halloween H 20 has a TV Cut that does the violence and cussword trim, but also has some alternate scenes fun. One added scene gives the counselor played by Alan Arkin some development by revealing that his mother cheated on his travelling salesman father, and he got blamed for knowing, but doing nothing.
 * The Rob Zombie remake has an Unrated Director's Cut on DVD.
 * Another victim of Executive Meddling was Highlander II the Quickening. When it ran over time and budget, the suits just couldn't wait to screw this pooch. The main difference between the Theatrical Cut and the Renegade Cut is that the immortals are NOT from freakin' space, but from the ancient past and predate humanity. The planet Zeist plotline was so clumsily added that it created one massive logic hole concerning MacLeod's reactivation of his immortal nature. This was handled in the Theatrical Cut with what had to be the worst explanation scene ever. Both have since been released on DVD.
 * Another film that got a slight tweak was Weird Science. The TV version shows two scenes not in the Home Video Version:
 * 1) In the first few minutes of the film, the boys are in the kitchen during their viewing of the Frankenstein movie to get snacks. Gary grabs a ridiculous handful of frozen mini-pizzas and shoves them into the microwave.
 * 2) During the party, some guys in Devo flowerpot hats show up, and ask to be let in. Lisa asks the guests what they think. The guests vote to toss 'em, but Lisa lets them in anyway.
 * One of the earliest examples is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. After the film's successful initial release in 1977, Steven Spielberg convinced Columbia Pictures to re-edit the film and shoot new footage for scenes he never got to finish—though in exchange, he also had to shoot a sequence that took place inside the mothership, and that became the focus of the 1980 promotional campaign. For years this was the official final cut until the 1998 Collector's Edition, which includes most of the new footage and adds shots cut from the original release, but drops the inside-the-mothership ending. A list of the various cuts and the differences between them is here.
 * Spielberg later caught some flack from his re-cut of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which like the Star Wars special editions, have redone special effects (mostly CG expressions added to the E.T. puppet) and some cut scenes. Fans were especially upset that the FBI agents had their guns replaced with walkie-talkies, an obvious difference made all the more obvious by the FBI agents holding their walkie-talkies in both hands... with their index fingers extended.
 * Disney made Special Editions of both Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King for IMAX theaters (and prepared Aladdin). Along with remastering the films for the larger IMAX format, each film got an additional musical number; in both cases the songs were taken from the stage versions, although Beauty's "Human Again" was really a Cut Song from the movie. Unlike Star Wars, Disney had the foresight of making both the original and special editions included on the DVD releases, although neither "original" one was the original animation. (In the case of Beauty and the Beast, a third version was added, a work-in-progress print shown on the New York Film Festival prior to the film's release, previously available as a separate laserdisc.)
 * Pocahontas also had a special edition, although it was not released theatrically. It added "If I Never Knew You", a Cut Song that did poorly in test screenings but better-establishes the lovers' relationship as the film's climax approaches.
 * That was a Cut Song? This Latin-American troper's old VHS copy (bought when the movie was first released) does have it.
 * The broadcast premiere of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had an extra scene cut from the theatrical version. Eddie is caught snooping around in Jessica's dressing room and is taken to Toontown, and the next morning he wakes up with a toon pig's head painted on top of his own. The scene is included as an extra on the DVD.
 * The removal of this scene causes a slight plot hole in the released version. With the scene intact, we see that Eddie returns to his office to shower off the pigs head, which is when Jessica arrives. When he exits the bathroom, he has very clearly just been taking a shower (he's soaking wet). But because Viewers are Morons, the producers apparently decided no one would be able to tell he had been showering, and added in the sound of a toilet flushing. Perhaps we are supposed to assume he was giving himself a swirlie?
 * Terry Jones was never happy with the original version of Erik the Viking. Some years later he supervised a re-edit that was carried out by his son, referred to as the "Director's Son's Cut". However, the quality of the recut is up for debate among fans, many of whom consider the recut to mangle the film and remove most of the funny non sequiter scenes. Definitely a YMMV.
 * The films Planet Terror and Death Proof were filmed with the specific purpose of cutting large chunks out of them, and were in their theatrical release bundled as the faux B-Movie feature Grindhouse. The DVD releases restore (most) of the scenes cut for the theatrical version. Death Proof in particular actually suffers from this, because the theatrical release takes a good 40 minutes before anything interesting happens. In the extended cut, it's a full hour before it picks up. And the lap dance doesn't count. It was much more interesting when you didn't see it. Plus, the original theatrical cut of Grindhouse wasn't released overseas, and is only on DVD in Japan (it was released on Blu-Ray in America, though); the intermission's trailer spoofs (save Machete) were dropped in the process. However, in the U.S. the pay-cable Encore movie networks have shown this cut.
 * Army of Darkness is especially odd in that there are several cuts depending on whether it's the theatrical release, domestic television broadcast, overseas market release or the Director's Cut. Some include the original ending (which was the one preferred by director Sam Raimi, but was changed at the request of the studio, which considered it "too depressing"), some include the theatrical ending, some include the extended windmill scene (strangely enough, the television broadcast has it, but the theatrical version didn't), some change the dialogue between Ash and Bad Ash, and some include other minor differences. Fans could have a field day just editing in their favorite versions of each scene, though the theatrical ending, where Ash usually ranks as just one more Crowning Moment of Awesome for fans of the series.
 * Watchmen gets both a Director's Cut and an Extended Cut. Oddly, the Extended Cut was given a home-release months after the Theatrical and Director's Cuts. Both new cuts are pretty substantial. The Director's Cut adds pretty much everything that was shot, minus the Tales of the Black Freighter tie-ins on the street corner. It bumps up the running time to three hours, a full half-hour. It's definitely a better movie for it, featuring more character development and more scenes that were in the comic. The Extended Cut adds another half-hour (bringing it to three and a half hours), featuring the entire Black Freighter animated feature woven into the movie and the accompanying street-corner bits. Your Mileage Will Vary on that one, since the animated features are more heavy handed and feel dropped in (unlike the careful weaving present in the comic), while the new live-action segments show how normal citizens react to the events around them.
 * James Cameron's 1989 sci-fi epic The Abyss was cut down by Cameron himself from from around 2 hours, 51 minutes to about 2 hours, 26 minutes for its theatrical release, with short bits removed from many scenes throughout the film, and a massive cut near the end of the film that focused on the . Cameron said he did this because certain scenes that read well as screenplay didn't translate to film with the effectiveness he wanted. In a bit of Averted Executive Meddling, he revealed that the 20th Century Fox higher-ups were actually, to quote Cameron, "horrified" when he told them he was cutting the end sequence differently. After the success of 1991's Terminator 2, however, Cameron used some money from a new contract to go back and finalize The Abyss into its initial 2 hour, 51 minute form, and this was later released as the "Special Edition."
 * The Director's Cut of The Butterfly Effect has additional scenes and a much darker ending:.
 * Vincent Gallo's infamous film The Brown Bunny debuted at the Cannes Film Festival to much disdain; Roger Ebert called it "the worst film in the history of Cannes." Later, when the film appeared in United States theaters, it had been re-edited, removing 26 minutes from what had been a 118 minute film, and Ebert gave the new version three out of four stars, saying that it was amazing how much of a difference the editing made.
 * To understand how much of a difference: the Cannes-cut apparently was Padding: The Movie with long sequences of the main character driving with bugs clashing against the windshield and when he did something like changing his shirt, critics started cheering.
 * Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2 have Director's Cuts scenes on DVD: In LW1, there's the sniper shootout scene, a scene with Murtagh practicing in the shooting range, the hooker scene and a couple more scenes, and in LW2 there's a pool scene in Leo Getz' lobby.
 * Sam Peckinpah's Cult Classic film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was a particularly infamous case of Executive Meddling, culminating in MGM actually taking the film away from Peckinpah and releasing a considerably shorter version that nearly the entire cast panned and refused to be associated with. A director's cut version was shown once, but didn't make it to the general public until 15 years after the film's initial release. And just to make things more confusing, the DVD has 3 different versions.
 * The R-Rated director's cut of 2003's Daredevil totally combined this with Better on DVD, restoring 30 minutes cut from the theatrical version, which included a completely removed subplot where Matt Murdock must prove the innocence of a man played by Coolio (Better Than It Sounds; honest), extra helpings of blood, and a couple more nods to the source material. It also altered the rainy-rooftop/screams-for-help scene between Matt and Elektra, making Matt more heroic by leaving Elektra to save a life instead of bedding her as the screams die off. Although it does retain some of the more divisive aspects of the theatrical cut such as the playground fight and the nu-metal soundtrack, general consensus is that the director's cut is a legitimately good movie (compared to the lukewarm response of the TC).
 * The Director's Cut of Dark City makes many changes to the theatrical cut, most of them minor, but one major change is the removal of the Opening Narration which explains the entire mystery that they were forced to put into the theatrical cut. The Director's Cut is universally regarded as a better film.
 * The Director's Cut of Donnie Darko greatly alters the pacing of the film, adding deleted scenes and new special effects, and switching the soundtrack of the movie around. Author Richard Kelly regards this version not as a director's cut (this title was the publisher's idea) as he considers the theatrical version just fine in its own right. Instead, to him the new version is a special edition of sorts. Since the new version alters the original, loved movie a great deal, Broken Base, They Changed It, Now It Sucks and Your Mileage May Vary ahoy.
 * Originally produced as a five-hour Miniseries for German television, Das Boot was edited down to 150 minutes for its original theatrical release. In 1997 Wolfgang Petersen made a new Director's Cut edit for a theatrical reissue, which clocks in at just under 210 minutes. Both the miniseries and 1997 versions have been released on DVD.
 * In 2001 Apocalypse Now was re-edited by Francis Ford Coppola into a new extended version titled Apocalypse Now Redux, which adds almost an hour of additional footage and is regarded by the director as an entirely different film (and held by most viewers and critics to be inferior to the original).
 * Strangely, the DVD of the original movie received an "18" (years and over) rating in Britain, while Redux only got a "15" despite including all of the language and violence from the original. Possibly the censors felt the violence was less concentrated in the longer version.
 * Every Kamen Rider movie since Project G4 has had a Director's Cut released, adding at least a bit of new footage. In the case of I'm Born!, it also added new songs for both hero and villain.
 * Double and Decade: Movie Wars gets an important revision in its Director's Cut. In the theatrical version, the Double segment comes between Decade and the team-up. The problem here is that the finale has more to do with Decade, meaning the Double segment breaks the narrative flow. The Director's Cut rectifies this by putting the Double segment first.
 * In the theatrical version of The Return of the Living Dead "Fuck You" is embroidered across the back of Freddy's jacket. In order to be able to show the movie on television, scenes were reshot with a jacket that reads "Television Version."
 * The Thief and the Cobbler was first conceived by Richard Williams (who would eventually become animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) in 1964, but spent almost 30 years in Development Hell. Williams eventually signed a deal with Warner Bros. in 1990 to release the film, but they had no faith in it since the film took way too long to release, plus Disney was about to come out with their version of Aladdin, so they pulled out. Then, the Completion Bond Company bought the rights to it in 1992, and a year later, producer Fred Calvert with Majestic Films released it in South Africa and Australia as The Princess and the Cobbler. Many of the scenes from Williams' workprint were cut, plus new dialogue, songs, voices (where there really weren't any before), and scenes (poorly animated by various companies and freelance artists across the world) were hastily added in. In 1995, it would be released in the U.S. by Miramax as Arabian Knight (later under the original title), where even more was butchered. An unofficial "Recobbled Cut" was made by a fan in 2006 that restored Williams' original vision as much as possible, but Williams has since disowned the film regardless.
 * The films directed by Orson Welles post-Citizen Kane were a magnet for Executive Meddling, and as such can be found in several different cuts on home video. The official DVD releases of Touch of Evil and Mr. Arkadin, for instance, each have three different cuts in the set. A similar release is allegedly planned for his Othello.
 * Salt saw two additional cuts on DVD, both with different endings that cut the Sequel Hook: a Director's Cut (where ) and an Extended Cut (where ).
 * The film version of The Outsiders was re-released as The Outsiders: The Complete Novel - deleted scenes that were in the book but not the original film were added back in, and more licensed music from the time period was added.
 * The American release version of The Man Who Fell to Earth was cut by about twenty minutes; this was partially to avoid an X rating for its graphic sexual content. Other scenes were reordered (this movie is not quite linear). Eventually the original cut was made available in the U.S., and it's this one that appears in The Criterion Collection.
 * Léon: The Professional / Leon exists in two different versions. The Professional is the American cut; Leon is the international cut (sometimes called version integrale.) The American version is edited down mainly to remove any moral quandaries about Matilda's actions - in the longer international version her crush on Leon is not so innocent, and more training scenes show her assisting with actual hits.
 * While nowadays considered the Franchise Killer prequel to Gettysburg, Gods and Generals actually received a standing ovation at its first pre-release screening. However, it ran for almost 5 hours. The studio's solution: cut it down to a more managable 3 1/2. This theatrical version, while shorter, didn't have a central theme or even much of a narrative structure. It was subsequently lambasted by critics, ignored by audiences (although many who actually bothered to see it claimed to enjoy it), and wound up being such a financial bomb that the studio didn't even bother releasing the original, superior cut until 8 years later in 2011. Among other things, the longer version edits out some of the religious preaching, adds a subplot with a young John Wilkes Booth, and includes the Battle of Antietam. So far, several people have said that this new cut fixes most (if not all) of the theatrical cut's main problems.
 * The Grudge Director's Cut features several new and extended scenes, serving to add more depth to the characters, depict more explicit violence and grisly imagery (such as the Saeki murders being shown in more detail - the theatrical version barely shows any of it - and explaining Kayako's death rattle and her unsettling, jerky movement, as well as longer shots of ), and to add to the feel and atmosphere. Also, Susan's vignette is switched around.
 * The original release of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery had two scenes replaced for later DVD versions. In the original theatrical and VHS versions, in the scene where the unfrozen Dr. Evil proposes a plan, after unsuccessfully suggesting to blackmail the royal family by revealing that Prince Charles had an affair and would have to divorce (Number Two reveals that Prince Charles already had an affair and is divorced), Dr. Evil proposes to use a laser to make a hole in the ozone layer to increase the risk of skin cancer, unless the world pays him a "hefty ransom." Number Two says, "That also has already been done." However, in latest DVD releases, Number Two says, "That also already has happened." Both clips were probably filmed on the same day, and one of them was used in the original release before replacing it with the other.
 * The initial release of the film was after the fatal car accident of Princess Diana (the one Prince Charles divorced), so they eliminated the "blackmailing the Royal Family" plot and probably made Dr. Evil just attempt to plan to shoot a laser in the ozone layer and tweak it enough for Number Two to say "That has already been done," minus the "also."
 * The other scene is when Austin is in the bathroom looking for Number Two, who has set a trap for him. Austin sits on the toilet and is attacked in a compartment by Dr. Evil's Irish assassin Paddy O'Brien. Austin grunts as he fights with O'Brien, and a Texan (Tom Arnold) is in another compartment thinking Austin is crapping. Austin groans "DO...YOU...WORK...FOR...NUMBER TWO!! DO...YOU...WORK...FOR...NUMBER TWO!!", prompting the Texan to respond "You show that turd who's boss!" In the later versions, the "DO YOU WORK FOR NUMBER TWO!" take is replaced by a take filmed around the time of the originally released clip, but this time it's "WHO...DOES...NUMBER...TWO...WORK...FOR! WHO...DOES...NUMBER...TWO...WORK...FOR!" The reason for all these minor edits is unclear.
 * Michael Mann released Director's Cuts for Miami Vice, Ali, The Last of the Mohicans and Manhunter, but all of his films were re-cut in some way following their theatrical runs for DVD release. The changes are minor, and are rarely more than slight changes in dialogue scenes.
 * William Friedkin re-worked The French Connection for its Blu Ray release by putting the film through a digital intermediate and tinting the colors to blue to create a more neo-noir look. Fans of the film were not pleased.
 * Metropolis was only shown in its original form for a few months in Germany. American studios balked at showing such a long film, so Lang cut the running length nearly in half. And then the cut footage was lost. There were later attempts to reconstruct the original cut, based on existing footage and guesswork. In 1984, Giorgio Moroder made a colorized version with an 80's pop soundtrack. Finally, in 2007, nearly all of the cut footage was rediscovered in a museum in Argentina. The version based on this, called The Complete Metropolis, is probably the closest we'll ever get to a definitive version.
 * There's TV cuts of Zucker-Abrams-Zucker films like Airplane! and The Naked Gun, featuring material that wasn't in the theatrical version (presumably to replace the R-rated jokes that had to be cut for broadcast).
 * Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition, which is often regarded as inferior to the original due to an obnoxious soundtrack and badly spliced in new scenes.
 * Despite the reputation directors' cuts have for being self-indulgent and bloated, Stanley Kubrick considered the UK cut of The Shining to be the definitive one (as opposed to the US cut, which is twenty minutes longer).
 * The original release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had a scene where Walter Donovan bribes the ruler of Iskenderun with "Precious valuables...donated by some of the finest Jewish families in Germany.". The word "Jewish" would be removed in all subsequent releases. In light of Schindler's List, it's possible that Steven Spielberg saw the original line as an Old Shame. It's meant as a horrifying line and a sign Donovan is a Complete Monster aware of the beginning of the Holocaust. Which is probably why they toned it down.
 * Star Trek the Motion Picture has gone through a few editions. Director Robert Wise considered the original theatrical release a "rough cut", due to it being rushed to meet Paramount's premiere date (to the point where the film reels were still wet from developing when they were shipped out). An extended cut appeared on ABC TV and was released on VHS as a "Special Longer Edition" in 1983. Wise would later revisit the work, supervising the "Special Director's Edition" DVD release in 2001, which allowed him to complete the film closer to what he had intended in 1979, had he had more time. Interestingly enough, the first Blu-Ray release of The Motion Picture is the theatrical cut.
 * The Blu-Ray releases of the first two Harry Potter films include both the theatrical cut and an extended cut. The extended cuts basically just re-incorporate the same Deleted Scenes which were extras on the original DVD releases. The Blu-Rays of the third movie onward only include the theatrical cut.

Literature

 * When Sir Terry Pratchett's publishers finally got fed up of sending out thousands of letters saying there was no demand for a reprint of The Carpet People (his first novel and bordering on Old Shame), it was only after Pratchett rewrote substantial amounts of the novel to correct what he saw as poor writing by his younger self.
 * Doubleday Publishers thought Stephen King's The Stand was too big, so the original edition had about 500 pages trimmed. Twelve years, later they released the Complete and Uncut edition, with the pages restored and some updating by King.

Live Action TV

 * The original Battlestar Galactica Classic Pilot Movie was first shown as a film in Canada to raise capital for the series. This version is trimmed. Then, it was subsequently released as a three-part episode for re-runs. The full, uncut pilot is available on the DVD set, as are a slew of deleted scenes from every single episode of the series.
 * The new series also has a slew of "Extended Unrated Versions" of many episodes and telemovies. These versions are available on DVD.
 * And editing scenes to fit with current-day Sunday-morning Japanese broadcast censors.
 * Have I Got News for You and QI have extended versions of their shows, broadcast the following night: Have I Got A Bit More News For You and QI XL respectively. However, some of these were not shown on The BBC for various reasons (The next night having sport on instead, and sometimes due to sensitivity of the material.) These episodes tend to get their first airing on Dave.
 * Rather than make new episodes for whatever reason, Disney recut the first season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in 2010, mostly just adding a few cheap visual effects - well, a few more cheap visual effects.
 * Likewise, reruns of the original Transformers cartoon were rebranded Transformers Generation Two, with the addition of a "Cybernet Space Cube" that provided new Idiosyncratic Wipes.
 * iCarly: Nickelodeon aired a special extended version of iSaved Your Life a week after the original airing, that included seven minutes of previously cut footage. The pilot episode also has an extended version, as does the special iCarly Saves TV.
 * Similarly, when it premiered after the Kids Choice Awards, Victorious aired its first episode as an extended version with three minutes of added footage. It has not aired again since but can be downloaded on iTunes.
 * The Adventures of Pete and Pete: The first season (1993) was eight episodes long, and succeeded by five "special" half-hours made over the span of three years (1991-1993). These were used to fill out the first season, and therefore had the opening credits sequence edited in. Mike Marrona, Big Pete's actor, had gone through puberty in between the first special and first season, meaning that the theme song depicted him as much taller and more-mature looking than he was in the actual episode. Vey jarring.
 * Before the specials, there were eighteen shorts, a handful of which were included on the DVD. In order to replace the old Vanity Plate from the 1990s with Nick's current one for the release, the last few seconds of each episode become only voiceover running over the vanity plate.
 * The 3-2-1 Contact series was condensed and re-edited into 3-2-1 Classroom Contact in 1992.
 * The "Director's Cut" of Red Dwarf: Back to Earth as seen on the DVD release, which edits the three 25-minute episodes together into a single one-hour-long special. As you can see, the Director's Cut is actually significantly shorter than the full broadcast version, trimming all the jokes that didn't really work and other filler—the end result is generally regarded to be much better.
 * Whenever 101 Dalmatians: The Series is aired on Disney Cinemagic in the U.K., some lines were cut out for no reason than to add more commercial time.'

Music

 * The Prayer Chain's 1995 album Mercury had been subject to a great deal of Executive Meddling prior to release: three songs were dropped, another song was added, and the whole thing was remixed to be less rough around the edges. In 2011, the band took the original master tapes and rereleased the album (via their Bandcamp page) "in its original order, with the original mixes, just as it was sent off to the label", under the new title Humb.
 * Sleep's Dopesmoker is essentially the director's cut of Jerusalem, although it's a bit more complicated than that: their label balked at their turning in an album that was one song stretched out to over sixty minutes of Epic Rocking, so Sleep compromised a little by cutting about ten minutes and splitting it into six arbitrarily divided tracks, with no silence between them. The label still wouldn't release it and the band broke up over the ordeal, but Jerusalem, the edited version saw release on a different label afterwards. A few years later came the Dopesmoker version, which used a different mix, restored the ten cut minutes, and indexed it as one long track as intended.
 * Russell Elavedo originally mixed the Dandy Warhols' 2003 album Welcome To The Monkey House, but Capitol Records had it given a glossier mix by Peter Wheatley without the band's permission and released that instead. In 2009, The Dandy Warhols released the album as originally intended under the title The Dandy Warhols Are Sound: Aside from the different mix, the tracks are presented in a different order, the song titles are sometimes slightly different, and the song "Welcome To The Monkey House" itself is cut, while the previously unreleased song "Pete Int'l Spaceport" is added.

Video Games

 * Mass Effect 3 will be getting a free Extended Cut (as downloadable content) in response to the poor receptionof it's ending.

Western Animation

 * Gargoyles had this indignity foisted on it with its Pilot Movie. According to Word of God, it was originally aired as a five-parter, this was trimmed into much shorter version to be shown in conjunction with a Disneyland Gargoyles ride. When the House of Mouse decided to release it on videocassette, they chose the shorter version because it had already been cleaned up. The longer, better has since been released on DVD.
 * The Disney Cinemagic airings of Recess usually have the theme song play slightly faster.

Other

 * David Morgan-Mar edited and resubmitted one of the Irregular Webcomic podcasts to add some missing sound effects and commented that he had "done a George Lucas".
 * He's also gone back and edited an earlier strip (Strip #1639), which featured an appearance by The Pope, because someone sent him a customized Lego Pope figure and he wanted to include it in place of his own version.