MATTHEW BAUM
Editor of the Scallion and “Seinfeld” Aficionado
Big news broke last week as Jerry Seinfeld threw his hat into the ring of speculative extended cuts of cultural milestones.
Seinfeld, best known for his role as Barry B. Benson in the hit 2007 film, “Bee Movie” announced that he had access to a two-hour-long cut of the series finale of the ‘90s sitcom “Seinfeld,” in which he played the titular role.
During a press briefing on Saturday, Seinfeld was asked how he felt about the popularity of Zack Snyder’s “Justice League,” and he was quick to respond.
“Ha! Ol’ Zacky got really lucky with how this whole Snyder Snip thing played out. Like, can you imagine some director pulling something like this 15 years ago? There’d be riots! People would be up in arms! They’d be saying, ‘Hey, Zacky, how come you didn’t show us the real movie the first time!’ I’m glad he was the first to do this sort of thing though, because I’ve actually been sitting on something along those lines for a while now.”
This announcement sent the reporters into a frenzy, pulling attention away from the main point of the briefing, Seinfeld’s upcoming biopic about Orville Redenbacher.
After 45 minutes of questions revolving around the “Seinfeld” cut, it became clear that the series finale of the popular television series was originally going to be over two hours long, featuring a number of POC characters that were greatly diminished or cut from the final product altogether, and sneak peeks into what would have expanded into the “Seinfeld”-Verse, a connected collection of series and films that focused on and fleshed out the backstories of various beloved “Seinfeld” characters.
Overnight, Twitter went abuzz with this information, and a petition to “Restore the ‘Seinfeld’-Verse” became a rallying cry for fans of observational comedy around the world.
The petition has over 75,000 signatures today, and the link to the Change.org site has been retweeted by the likes of Charlie Day, Paul Bettany and the official SlimJim account.
It’s not yet clear if there is a “Seinfeld” revival in the works, but Jason Alexander, the actor known for his performance in “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” has changed his Facebook profile picture to George Constranza, the character he played in “Seinfeld.”
The future’s looking bright for fans of ‘90s situational comedy. Seinfeld has not since responded to any correspondences, but his housekeeper said that he has been spending more time out of his garage full of highly-expensive cars, so it’s looking very likely that “Seinfeld” is destined for a reboot.