‘Red, White and Royal Blue’ Was Initially 3 Hours: ‘Everything That Wasn’t Alex and Henry Had to Go’

usmagazine.com:

Red, White and Royal Blue director Matthew López initially thought he had his work cut out for him when the first cut of the movie was three-hours long — but as he exclusively explained to Us Weekly, bringing it down to under two hours wasn’t as hard as it may seem.“I have a very, very different job than Casey McQuiston did as the author of the novel,” López, who cowrote the script with Ted Malawer, told Us.”This is obviously no slight to Casey whom I adore and who’s been very integral in the making of this movie.

You have the limitations of budget, time, space when you’re making a movie, and time being the most pressing one. What I’ve been saying to people is like, ‘Well, take the number of hours the audiobook lasts and subtract it by two, and that’s what was left out of the movie.'”The Red, White and Royal Blue audiobook comes in at 12 hours and 15 minutes while the Amazon Studios movie is a mere 1 hour and 58 minutes.“Why I say it wasn’t hard [to cut down] is that I quickly realized putting this movie together that, unlike the book, this movie was about Alex and Henry first,” the filmmaker shared. “And first, middle, and last, everything, every decision that I made as the director of this film had to flow into, is it right for Alex and is it right for Henry?

And is it right for them as a couple?”Red, White and Royal Blue, based on the 2021 bestselling novel, follows Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the son of the first female President of the United States (Uma Thurman), and Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) of the British royal family.

After they make headlines for all the wrong reasons, they’re forced to fake a friendship for publicity. However, as they quickly realize they have a lot in common, they start