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Film > Ghostbusters > Ghostbusters: The First Cut
Ghostbusters
THE FIRST CUT

The first cut (also known as the Preview Cut, and in some cases the Assembly Cut or the Editor's Cut) is the very first cut of the film, dated February 17, 1984. It features alternate and deleted scenes, extended lines of dialog, no music, temp sound effects, and no special effects.

Editor Sheldon Kahn produced this cut for test audience screenings two to three weeks after principal photography had concluded. He had the studio put a copy onto a Betamax videotape so that he would have a reference in case director Ivan Reitman later wanted him to go back to something from this earlier cut. Kahn had actually forgotten all about this Betamax videotape until sometime around 2021, when he was searching for something else that he recorded on videotape which his daughter asked him to find. The original Betamax tape is currently on display at GhostCorps headquarters.

The first cut made its home video debut in the Ghostbusters Ultimate Collection 4K/Blu-ray set from Sony, released in 2022. It includes subtitles in multiple languages and audio commentary by associate Producer Joe Medjuck and editor Sheldon Kahn, which was recorded in September 2021 (as I personally confirmed with my source at Sony). Sony chose to retain the original 4:3 Letterbox formatting instead of chopping a bit of blackness off the top and bottom and reformatting it into 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.

The first cut made its theatrical debut at the Alamo Drafthouse in New York City on Sunday July 30, 2023. Two screenings took place at 6:00 PM and 6:30 PM with Jason Reitman in attendance. The screenings, presumably, took place at the Ivan Reitman Theater, a Ghostbusters-themed theater named in late 2021 in honor of the film's director.

Official, the first cut is only available on the aforementioned Ghostbusters Ultimate Collection 4K/Blu-ray set. Unofficially, I ripped it from the Blu-ray, converted it to anamorphic widescreen, made a DVD ISO out of it, and added that ISO to the Disc Preservation Project flash drive. Someone else also ripped it and uploaded it to the Internet Archive.

As a sample of just how different this cut is, below is the montage after the guys bust the hotel ghost, which appears at 41:35. Spook Central VIPs get an exclusive bonus clip: The Ghost Montage (which appears at 1:17:25). Do be aware that *I* have reformatted the footage into widescreen for these video clips, and added the Spook Central watermark. This is not the way it looks on the Blu-ray.

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This is what Sheldon Kahn's original Betamax videotape looks like.

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