While beloved “John Wick,” “Lost,” “Bosch,” “The Wire” and “Fringe” actor Lance Reddick was listed high in the credits of “Godzilla vs. Kong” over the weekend, the actor only appears on screen for a few seconds.
For such a small cameo, he has surprisingly prominent billing which has led to the understandable speculation that Reddick’s role was much bigger and ended up being edited down to barely nothing (ala Matthew Fox in “World War Z”).
Speaking to GamesRadar, director Adam Wingard confirmed that was the case and explained why his role was greatly reduced:
“Originally, Lance’s part was a little bit bigger as he plays the Monarch director, he’s running the organization. There was a scene earlier in the film, a big board room scene where they’re setting up the mission.
He had a larger role, but ultimately we didn’t need that scene, we changed a couple of plot details during the editing process, so that earlier stuff got cut. Now, that stuff just counts as a fun cameo. He is still top credited, it’s still part of his contract. It’s funny because he shows up in the opening credits and then turns up for four lines, maybe three, in the movie ultimately.”
Wingard also says it may be one of the few scenes cut as Wingard was very economical with his filming, this film doing the least amount of reshoots of any of the MonsterVerse films (five days as opposed to two weeks).
They did “change one element of the plot” which led to some scenes at the start and end being reworked slightly, but not enough that can justify any sort of director’s cut as Wingard says: “this is the ultimate version of the film, I would never do a different version of it.”
“Godzilla vs. Kong” is currently out in cinemas and on HBO Max and has so far pulled in $285 million globally after less than two weeks of release. Domestically it made just over $48 million over its first five days.
