Lost ‘Tombstone’ Extended Cut Will Never Be Officially Released [Exclusive]
Actor Michael Biehn has revealed that the widely rumoured "extended cut" of Tombstone, the 1993 Western in which he played Johnny Ringo, does not exist as unseen footage. Speaking to Collider while promoting his new film Onslaught, Biehn explained that fans hoping for a longer version to be unearthed will be disappointed, as the additional material was cut from the script before filming took place rather than shot and later removed from the finished film.
Biehn said original writer-director Kevin Jarre's screenplay ran to around 142 pages, implying a two-and-a-half-hour film, but Jarre was fired four weeks into production over his unwillingness to collaborate, despite working with an experienced cast and crew including Kurt Russell and Oscar-winning cinematographer William Fraker. After Jarre's departure, Russell, producer Jim Jacks and another writer trimmed roughly 40 pages from the script over a single weekend so filming could continue, with the Cowboys' storyline losing the most material. Biehn stressed that these scenes were never filmed, meaning there is no lost footage to reconstruct: "Everything that was usable is on the screen."
- No extended Tombstone footage exists; cut material was never filmed
- Original 142-page script lost ~40 pages after writer Kevin Jarre was fired
- Kurt Russell and others rewrote the script in one weekend to keep production going
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Tombstone, released in 1993, is a Western film dramatising the events surrounding the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, starring Kurt Russell as lawman Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. Michael Biehn played Johnny Ringo, one of the film's antagonists. Over the years, fans have speculated that a much longer "extended cut" of the film exists somewhere, containing scenes that were shot but never included in the version released in cinemas.
The film had a troubled production history. It was originally written and directed by Kevin Jarre, but he was removed from the project partway through filming and replaced, with much of the script subsequently reworked before shooting was completed. This kind of behind-the-scenes upheaval is often what fuels rumours of unused or "lost" footage existing in a studio vault somewhere.
Understanding this background matters because it explains why the question of a longer version of Tombstone has persisted among fans for decades, and why comments from someone directly involved in making the film, such as Biehn, carry particular weight in either confirming or dispelling those long-standing rumours.