Stanley Kubrick’s Daughter Addresses “Conspiracy Theory” About ‘Eyes Wide Shut’s “Missing 20 Minutes”

← Back to the feed

Stanley Kubrick’s Daughter Addresses “Conspiracy Theory” About ‘Eyes Wide Shut’s “Missing 20 Minutes”

Deadline · 5 hours ago

Vivian Kubrick, daughter of the late director Stanley Kubrick, has publicly dismissed the long-running claim that 20 minutes were secretly cut from her father's final film, Eyes Wide Shut, after his death in 1999. Writing on X, she said she never heard of any such missing footage at the time and has seen no evidence since to confirm it existed, calling the theory an unproven "conspiracy theory" rather than established fact. The rumour has persisted for years, with some claiming the cut material linked the film's fictional secret society to Jeffrey Epstein's real-life sex-trafficking network.

Vivian explained that her father routinely had outtakes incinerated once a film was completed to stop studios reworking his material, and that Eyes Wide Shut had reached picture lock before his death, with the only change she was aware of being CGI used to obscure nudity in the orgy scene to secure an R rating. She acknowledged she could not vouch for the roughly 30 hours immediately following his death, as she was travelling from Los Angeles to England for the funeral, but said she became closely involved in safeguarding his work afterwards and is confident she would eventually have discovered any tampering. She also noted that Kubrick's archive, held by the University of the Arts London, would hold the best record of the truth, though she cautioned that the absence of physical evidence neither proves nor disproves the rumour. Kubrick died of a heart attack on 7 March 1999, aged 70, days after showing the film's final cut to his family and cast.

  • Vivian Kubrick denies 20 minutes were secretly cut from Eyes Wide Shut
  • Calls the Epstein-linked "missing footage" claim an unproven conspiracy theory
  • Says the film reached picture lock before Stanley Kubrick's 1999 death

Art Culture

Read the full article at the source →