Alternate versions

After its premiere the film was heavily cut and wasn't shown in its complete form until 1991, when a restored version was re-released. Among the restored scenes is one where where Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier) tries to seduce Antonius (Tony Curtis) in the bath. The soundtrack was damaged, so Anthony Hopkins was called in to dub Olivier's lines. In addition, several scenes of violence preview audiences reacted to negatively were restored, including Crassus bloodily stabbing Draba, Marcellus being drowned in the stew, Spartacus stabbing a Roman soldier in the pool, and several gory shots in the final battle, notably Spartacus lopping off the arm of a Roman soldier.

The film premiered at 202 minutes. However, the prints from the premiere were lost in the 1970s when Universal threw out all the film's tracks, outtakes, additional prints etc. (This was parallel to 'John Landis'' claim during his work on creating the director's cut of The Blues Brothers (1980)). The Criterion Collection has 4 minutes of lost scenes involving the Gracchus subplot:

• 1.) After the first senatorial meeting scene, Gracchus and Caesar walk around the market discussing the dirty tactic of fishing votes. (Shown in production-still form)
• 2.) Gracchus commits suicide by slitting his wrist in the bathtub. This occurred immediately after he closes the curtain near the end of the film. Only the audio track was found in the studio vault.