Synopsis:

With a well publicised troubled production Terry Gilliam's 'The Brothers Grimm' is in Terry's own words "Not the film they wanted and it's not quite the film I wanted". The "They" in this case would be The Brothers Weinstein, the film's producers, whose on-set arguments with Terry got so bad that production was even shut down while things calmed down. Still what remains is by most other Director's standards, a great film. A decade later it's stood the test of time and it reflects well on Gilliam that he cast actors like Matt Damon and the late Heath Ledger against-type in the lead roles, at a time when they perhaps weren't taken as seriously as today. Plus giving future 'Game Of Thrones' star Lena Headey the female lead, seems like genius in retrospect. I felt it was time to take another look at this wonderfully loopy and fanciful film through the prism of fanediting... Using all the available 'Deleted Material' and hints provided in Terry's Director's Commentary, I've tried to bring this film a little closer to the longer and crazier cut that Terry originally might have wished to have seen the light of day. Hopefully this cut is also better, less mainstream and more like Terry's other work. The available 'Deleted Material' was excellent but only available in a very poor and largely unfinished state. So as much as was possible, I've tried to finish VisFX, complete the Soundmix and Colour-Grade the footage to match the body of the movie. However, the scenes are still in a less than perfect state, which is why I call this... "The Fairytale Workprint".

Intentions:

To restore all 12 deleted scenes, rearrange two other misplaced scenes and to bring the additional footage as close to the quality of the rest of the movie as possible.

Change List:

00.00.00 - Added FE.org title 00.00.12 - Added TM2YC title 00.00.24 - Removed 'Dimension Films' title 00.00.34 - Remixed score 00.00.36 - Removed "Magic Beans" prologue and moved it to later as Gilliam originally intended 00.00.38 - Added "Once Upon A Time..." onscreen text 00.00.40 - Added "Red Riding Hood" sequence from later in the film as Gilliam originally intended 00.00.43 - Added "1811" onscreen text 00.02.30 - Rebuilt soundmix and remixed score 00.02.35 - Added fade into title sequence and regraded colour of the sequence to be a lot warmer 00.02.41 - Added further soundFX to title sequence 00.02.52 - Regraded 1st establishing shot to better match the colours of the 2nd shot 00.12.24 - Added slow fade into "Magic Beans" prologue in the place Gilliam originally intended as the first flashback. Colours also desaturated and regraded to be warmer shot-by-shot 00.19.49 - Removed two truncated shots of Cavaldi and the Grimms and replaced with full "Escargot" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot and an additional 22 new sound layers added 00.24.03 - Added "Brothers In Cage" deleted scene. Scene regraded and an additional 8 new sound layers added 00.24.18 - Finished bluescreen shot of Cavaldi whipping horses 00.29.27 - Added "Cavaldi Warns Will" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, all dialogue remixed, an additional 17 new sound layers added and Score remixed 00.30.20 - Regraded first 6 shots outside Angelika's house to better match deleted footage and to better match other similar sequences in the film 00.33.59 - Added "In The Forest" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, dialogue remixed, an additional 15 new sound layers added and Score remixed 00.34.15 - Brought forward Will's "9 times out of 10 there's a human perpetrator" line to where it would have been in the deleted conversation 00.37.56 - Desaturated Angelika's flashback to her father 00.46.18 - Added "Cinderella Story" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, an additional 35 new sound layers added and Score remixed 00.54.28 - Added "Will To The Rescue" deleted scene. Scene regraded, an additional 86 new sound layers added and Score remixed 00.56.22 - Regraded scene of Cavaldi and the Wolf to better match the deleted footage 01.03.46 - Added "The Chef Gets The Chop" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, an additional 22 new sound layers added and Score remixed 01.06.14 - Rescored the Grimms entrance into the village 01.07.53 - Added "No Hidey Hidey Secrets" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, dialogue remixed, an additional 5 new sound layers added 01.34.10 - Added "The Fat Soldier" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, dialogue remixed, an additional 41 new sound layers added and Score remixed 01.34.13 - Fixed flash-frame error in original source footage 01.35.11 - Pushed back shot of Angelika coming to rescue the Grimms to give her time to escape the Fat Soldier 01.37.09 - Desaturated Angelika's father's flashback about the Queen 01.39.37 - Added "Where Is This Tower" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, dialogue remixed, an additional 26 new sound layers added and Score remixed. Plus removed original truncated 20-second version of the scene 01.59.13 - Added "Sasha's Funeral Procession" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, dialogue remixed, an additional 29 new sound layers added and Score remixed. 02.01.08 - Added "Ready For Life On The Road" deleted scene. Scene regraded shot-by-shot, dialogue remixed, an additional 14 new sound layers added. Plus removed original truncated 36-second version of the scene 02.02.58 - Regraded credits to give them a "warmer" look 02.10.44 - Added fanedit credits title card including thanks.

Additional Notes:

- Added all 12 deleted scenes - Made small trims and rearrangements needed to reincorporate deleted scenes as needed - Colour graded scenes to match the rest of the movie and sharpened the image - Finished the incomplete soundmix on all scenes - Made a few changes to better reflect Gilliam's original intent - Added light film-grain throughout to both unify the look of the original and deleted footage and to counteract the overuse of DNR present in the Blu-Ray transfer - Desaturated all 3 flashback sequences. I felt this helped story wise, as it makes them less easy to mistake fro dreams or fairytales.

Other Sources:

The Brothers Grimm Blu-Ray The Brothers Grimm Soundtrack Hundreds of freesound.org public-domain sound elements.

Special Thanks:

Thanks to plurmonger, addiesin, Omaru1982, Kal-El, HyperDown, Brumous and skyled for their input in the ITW thread.