Posted on 04/16/2025 8:00:19 AM PDT by AdmSmith
“The Master and Margarita” filmmaker 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.
The Master and Margarita (Russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967, after the writer’s death on March 10, 1940, by his widow Elena Bulgakova. The manuscript was not published as a book until 1967, in Paris. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official censors, and these were incorporated in a 1969 version published in Frankfurt. The novel has since been published in several languages and edition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita
The novel was an influence on Mick Jagger as he wrote “Sympathy for the Devil”.
I’m not sure how well this translates to the screen. Probably not a box-office powerhouse anyway.
IMHO this is the best version 8 h
The Master and Margarita (Full Film with subtitles).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEdOcXr-OiQ
Do you agree?
I think that there’s something wrong with this info and dates, since I read a paperback version , in English, in 1965 or ‘66. I do remember liking the book, though .
Perhaps it was 1967?
(1967). The Master & Margarita. Ginsburg, Mirra transl. New York: Grove.
[1967, Harper & Row and Harvill]. The Master & Margarita. Glenny, Michael transl; Franklin, Simon intr. New York; London: Knopf; Everyman’s Library.
That is not Бегемот. ;-)
An amazing book. Well worth a read.
Unlike “The Hobbit” or “The Lord Of The Rings” movies.
Agreed. The great Russian novels are so deep they rarely translate to screen. You could never translate Dostoevsky to screen. But that’s no excuse to censor anything.
What’s next, banning “Masha And The Bear”?
Thanks for looking up that info!
The irony is the Bulgakov's book was written as a satire attacking the official dogma of Stalinist Russia - a world where people prefer to believe what the state tells them to what they see with their own eyes. The novel is about as far from "Putinism" as it's possible to be.
Numbskulls would have banned Doctor Zhivago if they could have.
I think I saw a movie with this title on Cinemax about thirty years ago.
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