Lars Von Trier has abandoned plans to release a softcore version of his sex epic Nymphomaniac. The film's two-part four-hour cut, which is due to debut in Copenhagen on Christmas Day, will now contain explicit scenes.

The release of Nymphomaniac will see the Danish director give up final cut for the first time in his career. The decision was apparently taken after Von Trier said he was unwilling to trim the two-part film's current five and a half hour running time himself. Nymphomaniac's strange fate is detailed in an extended making-of feature in the Danish film magazine Filmmagasinet Ekko which was picked up by the Hollywood Reporter.

"The short version is against Lars' own will, but he accepts it because he understands market mechanisms," says Von Trier's long-term producing partner Peter Aalbaek Jensen in the magazine article. "You cannot make a film for more than 60 million kroners (about $11 million or £6.9 million) that is so lengthy. Five and a half hours is so extreme that it reduces market value so radically that investors would have felt they had bought a pig in a poke."

It is extremely unusual a director of the artistic clout of Von Trier to allow somebody else to complete their vision, particularly on such a singular project as Nymphomaniac. It is not known if the longer five-and-a-half-hour cut will ever be released, and Jensen refused to confirm if Von Trier would take it to next year's Cannes film festival.

Nymphomaniac, which stars the film-maker's regular muse Charlotte Gainsbourg in the lead, has been billed as an exploration of the erotic life of a woman from infancy to middle age. Digital trickery and body doubles have reportedly been used to portray famous stars such as Uma Thurman, Stellan Skarsgård, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell and Shia LaBeouf having sex.

A teaser trailer for the much anticipated film was briefly removed from YouTube earlier this month after apparently falling foul of the site's rules on nudity and sexual content.

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