Vivian Kubrick, daughter of the late director Stanley Kubrick, has spoken out against a long-running conspiracy theory about his final film, Eyes Wide Shut. In a lengthy post on X, she said she had never heard of a missing 20 minutes being cut from the movie after her father's death.
The conspiracy theory
The erotic psychological thriller, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, was released in 1999. Kubrick died of a heart attack just days after screening his final cut to Warner Bros. His sudden death fueled rumours that the studio cut 20 minutes of the film, including an alternative ending, because it was deemed too dark.
The theory suggests that in Kubrick's original version, Cruise and Kidman's characters sacrificed their own daughter to a child sexual abuse ring. Some have linked this to the Jeffrey Epstein case, suggesting Kubrick may have known about crimes involving the global elite.
Claims and denials
Screenwriter Roger Avary, on Joe Rogan's podcast a couple of years ago, claimed that as "a student of Kubrick" he noticed parts of the film Kubrick wouldn't have done himself, including scenes that would have been trimmed and a "missing" narration. This fuelled the rumours.
However, Nigel Galt, the movie's editor, said in an interview last year that nothing was cut. Now Vivian Kubrick, who worked with her father on several films, has also weighed in.
Vivian Kubrick's response
In her X post, she wrote: "I never heard of a missing 20 minutes at the time, I have never subsequently seen or been shown any evidence that such a section existed, and I know of no surviving material that establishes that it did."
She added: "If indeed 20 minutes had been removed, I definitely would have found out about it eventually." She tagged @joerogan and included hashtags such as #EpsteinFiles, #GhislaineMaxwell, #SexTrafficking and #ConspiracyTheory.
