Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films are returning to cinemas as one combined movie. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which combines Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2, will be released across the U.S. by Lionsgate on 5 December. Tarantino originally conceived and shot his violent revenge thriller, starring Uma Thurman as The Bride, as one movie, but he split it into two volumes during the editing process due to its four-hour runtime. They were released six months apart, in October 2003 and April 2004. "I wrote and directed it as one movie - and I'm so glad to give the fans the chance to see it as one movie," Tarantino said in a statement, reports Variety. "The best way to see Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is at a movie theater in glorious 70mm or 35mm. Blood and guts on a big screen in all its glory!" The new release will feature a never-before-seen 7 1/2-minute animated sequence. To bring the volumes together into one cohesive story, the cliffhanger ending from Vol. 1 and the recap opener of Vol. 2 have been removed. According to the publication, the Pulp Fiction filmmaker premiered The Whole Bloody Affair at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 and has floated the idea of releasing it in cinemas ever since. He showed the re-edited feature at his New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles in 2011, and it recently had a run this summer at Tarantino's Vista Theater, with an intermission taking place between the first and second parts. Kill Bill followed The Bride as she exacted her revenge on her former team of assassins and her boss Bill after they left her for dead at her wedding. The films also starred Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah and Vivica A. Fox and the late Michael Madsen and David Carradine. It has yet to be announced if the film will be released outside of the U.S.