Film: You know how “director’s cuts” always come out some time after a movie comes out? Whose “cut” makes the theater?

Way back....30s-40s.....films went through many script changes (likely still do today), sometimes a film began with 1 director, then for various reasons, may have a new director....sometimes causing what may have already been filmed, to be scrapped.

As one earlier poster has noted, a finished film was at the mercy of the censor board. During this time, the scripts were often presented to the censors for their approval and then filming began.

Director's Cuts? Back then, there were no such thing. After the film was edited and approved by the Breen/Hays censor board, the films were released to theaters, and that was 'the finished product.'

In some cases, films had scenes edited after their initial release. Case in point, the 1931 Frankenstein was subject to a number of cuts, after its first release. The most famous being the scene of the monster and little Maria, tossing flowers into the lake, and her tragic accidental drowning. For decades we watched this film with a jump cut splice, never knowing what actually took place. Thankfully this missing footage and the other cuts, were restored in the 80s and we now view the film fully restored and complete.

Today we enjoy Director's cuts of many films....The Exorcist, for example, aka The Version You Have Never Seen.....the Peter Jackson's King Kong, etc.

Movies are cut most often due to time on screen.
Hard work for folk to sit for more than two and a half hours of anything.

Then there's the role the censors play.

Censors can insist on certain shots; frames; scenes being re-shot or removed completely if it has consensus that they are too graphic (sex; violence; drugs; abuse etc.)
This is important because it depends on the rating given to the movie as a result.

eg: It's harder to rent movie theatre screens for an R rated movie than it is for an 18 certificate for example.
Why ? Because the likes of the big studios that own a larger slice of the movie theatres can decide whether or not to show a movie based on it's classification alone !

The Director Ron Howard once said . For all the reasons listed above.
So i guess some Director's cuts are the film with the scenes that had to be cut for cinematic release.

There's a brilliant documentary called "This film is not yet rated" by Kirby Dick and Eddie Schmidt (2006) that explains how it works and feature comments from well known Directors and Producers on the subject

release cuts are often decided by marketers and others not involved in the creative project.
they choose what is in or out by "what demographic " is served by this
"will this play to Millennials?" or generation whatever
they also tend to be shorter, to fi in the 90 minutes that distributers feel most comfortable with
"2 hours? who is gonna sit thru that?"
@SW-User
A director's cut,, is just that,
an edit that allows the director and creators of the work, to Show what they intended to be the product.

they come our After the general release cut,, because the "First Money" is already been earned or lost. so the release of a second version is of no harm to the Distributors or the Studio,
and can Only add to the general revenue

the differences are often profound

There’s usually constraints put on the first release…stipulations the studio demands the director to stick with. As a result, many hours of film are never used. The directors cut is generally released for films that did well enough, and include deleted scenes that tend to make more sense of certain scenes and sometimes even the movie as a whole.

Usually scenes they cut from the original for time and other story issues

Alien: Director's Cut.

The studio traditionally gets "final cut". That is, THEY reserve the right to approve the final edit of the movie for what they believe is the best marketable product. A director's cut might differ from that. The differences can be minor or major.

The version that hits theaters is always the executive producer's cut. The EP gets the final say on what makes it into theaters. And sometimes, the EP makes dumb decisions. Look up the director's cut of Superman II, and compare and contrast it with the theatrical release.

The studio cut