Meet Joe Black -1998 -

For television and airline broadcasts, a significantly shorter two-hour version of the film was created. This edit omitted much of the business-related subplot. Director Martin Brest was so unhappy with this truncated version that he disowned it, and it was credited under the Hollywood pseudonym Alan Smithee.

You can check the movie's current availability on JustWatch . Meet Joe Black -1998

Is perfect? No. The subplot involving a corporate takeover (featuring Jake Weber as a scheming son-in-law) feels like a generic 90s thriller stuffed into a poetry book. The three-hour runtime does test the limits of the average viewer. You can check the movie's current availability on JustWatch

"Meet Joe Black" remains a cinematic anomaly—a three-hour meditation on death starring one of the world's biggest heartthrobs. While it was initially dismissed for its pacing and length, time has been kind to its ambitious themes. It is a film that asks us to stare unflinchingly at the end of life so that we might better appreciate the sweetness of a peanut butter sandwich or the thrill of a first kiss. The subplot involving a corporate takeover (featuring Jake

However, the film found a massive second life on home video and television broadcasts. Furthermore, it holds a bizarre footnote in cinematic history: the first full-length trailer for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was attached to theatrical prints of Meet Joe Black . Millions of fans famously bought tickets to the film just to watch the trailer, leaving the theatre immediately afterward.

Upon release, Meet Joe Black grossed roughly $142 million worldwide. While it was not the runaway box office smash Universal had hoped for domestically, it found massive success internationally and in the home video market.