Exhibition of The Boat That Rocked: The North American Release

North American release:

Following the film's commercial failure at the British box-office Focus Features commissioned a re-edited version for North American release on November 13, 2009, retitled Pirate Radio.

Curtis deleted approximately twenty minutes of footage from the original UK version to address complaints from several critics that the film's running time was excessive.

However, the film was still commercially unsuccessful in its new guise, having to compete with Disney's A Christmas Carol, 2012, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, The Blind Side and The Princess and the Frog during the US Thanksgiving holiday.

'The trade says that Focus president James Schamus said his team is working with Curtis to trim about 20 minutes from the film, which originally ran 129 minutes. As a chief complaint from critics was the film's length.'