Mamma Mia 2 deleted scenes: Emotional Donna moment CUT from finished movie?

The soundtrack to Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again was released a week prior to the movie’s unveiling, and charted at No4 in the UK album charts on Friday – a position it could well shoot up from after the movie hit cinemas.

But one song that was on the album was noticeably absent from the movie. Has the scene it was recorded for been cut?

Track two on the album is Lily James as a young Donna singing I Wonder (Departure) – but that song was not in the finished movie.

Presumably it would have come as she was telling Tanya (Jessica Kennan Wynn) and Rosie (Alexa Davies) that she was planning on heading off an adventure, with the latter two actresses also credited on the song.

In the finished cut, viewers saw a montage of the girls packing up Donna’s things and laughing as they waved her off – but the music in the background is not the new recording of the 1977 ABBA hit.

Also on the soundtrack but not in the film are Pierce Brosnan and Amanda Seyfried’s vocals on Knowing Me, Knowing You.

In the movie, Sophie and the older Sam prompt the flashback of young Donna finding out young Sam had a fiancée, but the song is performed only by the latter two – played by James and Jeremy Irvine respectively.

Finally the older Donna’s (Meryl Streep) version of The Day Before You Came features on the digital version of the soundtrack but not in the movie.

However the fact that it’s not on the CD album either perhaps implies that it was recorded as a bonus track rather than for a specific scene or incident in the tale.

Mamma Mia 2 has performed well at the US box office over the weekend but is believed to have narrowly missed out on the No1 spot thanks to Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer 2.

That movie is estimated to have launched with $35.8 million in the USA, with Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again a hairline behind on $34.4 million.

While second place will no doubt be a disappointment, the takings are perfectly in line with industry forecasts and will by no means be viewed as a flop.

Its international performance has been strong, according to Billboard, with an estimated $42.4 million from other territories – bringing its global total to an impressive $76.8 million thus far.

The United Kingdom gave it a lot of love, where it grossed $13.1 million.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is out now. Read the Express.co.uk verdict here.