Vivian Kubrick, daughter of the late filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, has publicly addressed persistent conspiracy theories surrounding her father's final film, Eyes Wide Shut. These theories, amplified in recent years by figures like podcaster Joe Rogan and filmmaker Roger Avary, suggest that significant portions of the movie were removed after the director's death.
In a series of posts on X, Vivian Kubrick stated that her father routinely incinerated film outtakes to prevent studios from re-editing his work. "You know, this is as good a time as any to finally address the missing 20 minutes from Eyes Wide Shut. It’s a story that has been circulating for many years, so let me tell you what I actually know and don’t know," she wrote.
She explained that she never heard of any missing 20 minutes either at the time of the film's release or since, and has seen no evidence to confirm such a section ever existed. Kubrick clarified that while she was not privy to every detail immediately before or after her father's passing, as she was in Los Angeles scoring a film, the only alteration she was aware of involved the use of CGI to obscure nudity in the orgy scene to secure an R rating. "But I did not hear that any shots or scenes were removed," she stated.
Kubrick elaborated on the post-production process in 1999, noting that Eyes Wide Shut had reached picture lock and was in the final stages of post-production when her father died. The film was edited on Avid, a process that did not involve the permanent digital archiving common today. She added that she has no knowledge of whether any of the Avid editorial material from the production still exists. The official archive of Stanley Kubrick's papers and production materials is held by the University of the Arts London, but Kubrick noted that, to her knowledge, there is no surviving cache of Avid rushes from the film.
Vivian Kubrick concluded that, absent substantive evidence, the story of 20 minutes being removed from Eyes Wide Shut after her father's death remains a conspiracy theory. She asserted that if such footage existed, she, having taken her responsibility to protect her father's work very seriously, would have found out.
These statements directly counter claims made by Roger Avary during a podcast with Joe Rogan in December 2024. Avary alleged that Warner Bros. altered the film's original ending against Kubrick's wishes, suggesting the film was originally meant to conclude with the main characters giving their child away to a "pedo cult." This interpretation was linked to theories suggesting Stanley Kubrick had foreknowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. Warner Bros. has consistently maintained that the released version of Eyes Wide Shut is the director's intended cut.