Film modification

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The term film modification can be used in general for any form of modification of a film to suit the distributor or the audience's politics or age.

Early cases of this practice go back to the Nazis, who regularly stole prints of American movies from European countries during their Blitzkrieg raids. They would then either cheaply reanimate the movie (see Hochzeit im Korallenmeer), or they would change the names in the credits (as with Max and David Fleischer's cartoons).

As theatrical movies began to air on television, networks successfully sought permission to air shortened versions of movies. These TV version of theatrical films had scenes or sections of movies cut out, in order to provide a length short enough to fit in fixed number normal television half-hour-based time slots (often 4 half-hour slots). This also allowed scenes unsuitable for television to be cut or trimmed such as those with sex or graphic violence.

At the end of the 1990s, some small companies began selling copies of movies, without the violent, indecent or foul language parts, to appeal to the family audience. By 2003, Hollywood reacted against these unauthorized modifications, as it considered them to be a destruction of the filmmakers work, and a violation of the controls an author has over his or her works. Famous movie heads like director-producer Steven Spielberg publicly bashed this practice in magazines.^{[citation needed]}

Less controversial than editing movies were the rise of director's cut editions of movies, which flourished with the advent of DVDs. These restore scenes to movies which had been shortened according to the reactions of test audiences.