‘The Master and Margarita’ Heads to Court as Producers Block U.S. Release of Russian Blockbuster (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Michael Lockshin is locked in a legal battle over his blockbuster Russian-language adaptation of the celebrated Soviet novel, with the director accusing two producers of blocking his efforts to bring his movie to U.S.

cinemas. The lawsuit, which was filed by sales agent Luminosity Pictures and shared with Variety, alleges that producers Svetlana Migunova-Dali and Grace Loh, who are planning their own English-language adaptation of the book, cannot prove legitimate ownership of the rights to the novel.

The suit also contends that “The Master and Margarita” — which was first published in the 1960s — is in the public domain, “ensuring that neither this group nor anyone else can block the film’s release,” according to Lockshin.

With the director expecting a court date to be set in the coming weeks, producers Migunova-Dali and Loh are firing back, with their lawyer dismissing the case as a “sham” and insisting that “Luminosity should withdraw its frivolous complaint now before this blows up in their face.” The dispute marks the latest plot twist for Lockshin’s big-budget adaptation of the iconic novel, which was written by the Kyiv-born Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov and published posthumously in the 1960s.