James Gray Says ‘Ad Astra’ Was ‘Taken Away’ From Him and Made Longer by 20th Century Fox: ‘It Would Have Been a Very Different Movie’
James Gray expressed dissatisfaction with the final cut of his film 'Ad Astra,' stating it was altered by 20th Century Fox and made longer than he intended. He revealed that his version would have been significantly different, being 12 minutes shorter. Gray emphasized his desire to have creative control over his projects, contrasting it with his experience on 'Paper Tiger.'
- ▪James Gray stated that the released version of 'Ad Astra' was not his cut.
- ▪The film was lengthened by 20th Century Fox after poor test screenings.
- ▪Gray mentioned that he would love to create a shorter director's cut of 'Ad Astra.'
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | Variety |
| Canonical URL | https://variety.com/2026/film/news/james-gray-ad-astra-taken-away-by-studio-1236758244/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 25 May 2026 12:21:37 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-25T12:37:36.725Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-25T12:37:36.725Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | OtNLmqGiryIw · 3 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Home Film News May 25, 2026 5:21am PT James Gray Says ‘Ad Astra’ Was ‘Taken Away’ From Him and Made Longer by 20th Century Fox: ‘It Would Have Been a Very Different Movie’ By Alex Ritman Plus Icon Alex Ritman @alexritman Latest Boots Riley Says Cannes Didn’t Pick ‘I Love Boosters’ or ‘Sorry to Bother You’ and Chose ‘The Idol’ Over ‘I’m a Virgo’: ‘They Just Don’t Like My Stuff. All Good’ 2 hours ago Barbra Streisand Sends Thank You Video Message to Cannes Film Festival for Honorary Palme: ‘Merci Beaucoup and Vive La Cinema!’ 2 days ago Netflix Lands ‘La Bola Negra’ for U.S.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Variety.
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