It takes a long, long time to finish editing a movie. From assembling all of the raw footage into a first cut to tweaking shots frame-by-frame to adding in visual effects, the post-production process on a film can be rough, tough, and fraught. And typically with these early rough cuts, it barely feels like a watchable movie in any way. As Denis Villeneuve once said about his first four-hour cut of Blade Runner 2049, "You have to kill your darlings and I think four hours was too self-indulgent... It’s [that way] in all movies; there’s always a long cut at the beginning. The first cut is always long and it’s a process and a lot of editing... I will not show it to anyone, the four hours, it doesn’t work."

When producer Hiram Garcia spoke with our own Steve Weintraub about his upcoming Red Notice, the subject of Black Adam's latest cut came up. "A lot of times when you see that early cut, it sets a table where you realize, 'Okay, now we understand how much work [we've] got to do,'" he said. And then he explained why, when watching this initial director's cut of the Dwayne Johnson DC superhero (er, super-antihero) movie, he felt more confident than usual.

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Image via Warner Bros.

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"We just saw the director's cut recently, and we were really excited," told Garcia to us — and the director, to remind you, is Jaume Collet-Serra, who recently directed Johnson in Jungle Cruise. Continued Garcia:

"Granted, the movie's in a stage where there are no effects done. It's so fresh after filming. But anytime the movie is that entertaining and good in that raw of a form, it makes us very confident. So [we're] really excited with where the movie is. Jaume has done such a good job. The movie is big. It's fun. DJ was born to play Black Adam — [I've] got to tell you, if there was ever anyone who is just perfect for this role, it's him. Then seeing him with the rest of the JSA and all those characters and Pierce [Brosnan] and Aldis [Hodge] and Quintessa [Swindell] and Noah [Centineo], it's a "Pinch me" moment. It was one of the most fun movies we've ever made and also just the coolest to be making something on this scale and with a character who's going to have this much of an effect on the DC Universe. It's really been awesome, and I think you're really going to dig it."

Even in one of its first director's cuts, Black Adam seems to be playing like gangbusters, making the whole team happy — and making us more excited to see it.

But when will we get to see more footage of this awesome director's cut? After the DC FanDome teaser, is there a full trailer coming soon? Garcia told us not to hold our breath: "I'm not going to give a timeline yet because I don't want to get people excited and crazy when we're not fully locked in. But we're in the works. It's all in motion, but, obviously, this is a very heavy visual effects movie, so there's a lot of visual effects that are in the pipeline right now that we're getting going. But that first trailer is going to be good, trust me when I say that."

Black Adam comes to theaters on July 29, 2022. Try not to get too excited and crazy until then.

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Image via Warner Bros.