‘Wish Upon’ Gets Director’s Cut with October 10 Blu-ray Release

While not every movie finds a big audience when it hits theaters, the variety of different home video releases and features allows films to find their audiences long after their theatrical debut. The horror film Wish Upon, a variation of the Monkey’s Paw story, will be coming to Blu-ray on October 10 with a more gruesome director’s cut and a variety of special features.

In addition to both the theatrical and director’s cuts getting released, we’ll also get the featurettes “I Wish: The Cast Share What They Would Wish” (all formats except VOD), “Attic Tour with Joey King” (all formats except VOD), “Directing Darkness: John Leonetti and Cast Talk About Developing a Horror Film” (Blu-ray and Digital exclusive), and “Motion Comics: Lu Mei’s Curse and Arthur Sands Reveal The Stories Behind The Previous Owners Of The Box” (Blu-ray and Digital exclusive).

The film’s synopsis is as follows:

“Twelve years after discovering her mother’s suicide, 17-year-old Clare Shannon (Joey King) is bullied in high school, embarrassed by her manic, hoarder father Jonathan (Ryan Phillippe) and ignored by her longtime crush. All that changes when her father comes home with an old music box whose inscription promises to grant its owner seven wishes.

“While Clare is initially skeptical of this magic box, she can’t help but be seduced by its dark powers, and is thrilled as her life radically improves with each wish. Clare finally has the life she’s always wanted and everything seems perfect – until the people closest to her begin dying in violent and elaborate ways after each wish. Clare realizes that she must get rid of the box, but finds herself unable and unwilling to part with her new-and-improved life – leading her down a dark and dangerous path.”

This confirms director John Leonetti’s promise from earlier this year that the PG-13 film would get an extended cut.

“There’s an 11-minute longer version of the movie,” the director revealed to Coming Soon. “But we had to cut it because of the pacing. There’s some amazing character s**t, like the scene with Clare and her dad on the bed, for example; that went considerably longer and it was actually so good that people who saw it would get tears in their eyes. But it was just too long for this ‘zone’, you understand what I mean? That’s just part of the deal with a movie like this and the audience it was made for.”

Using a scene from the trailer as an example, in which a woman’s hair gets caught in a garbage disposal, the director revealed, “And that scene with Sherilyn [Fenn] in the sink, she does get scalped and that’s in the unrated director’s cut that we’re releasing on Blu-ray and on cable or wherever.”

Leonetti added, “There is a cut that initially got an R and her scalp gets torn up pretty good. I can’t wait for people to see that version of the movie. It’s just better. It’s a better version of the movie all around, but it’s still paced pretty briskly.”

You can pick up your copy of Wish Upon on October 10.