June 3, 2010

Did 'I Love You Phillip Morris' get delayed again?

It seems to have, according to Cinematical:

Jim Carrey's had a rough go of it lately, movie-wise, and I Love You Phillip Morris is a prime example. Morris, which costars Ewan McGregor, was initially planned to hit theaters in spring 2009 -- check out a promo image of it from 2008 here -- and premiered at that year's Sundance Festival. Based on the true crime novel by Steve Mcvicker about Steven Russell (Carrey), a married man who ends up in jail and falls in love with his cellmate, Philip Morris (McGregor); in real life, Russell broke out of jail several times, but his ultimate desire was to help Morris escape as well. In the movie, Russell is released from jail but desperate to spring his lover as well, which requires him to pull off a number of capers in order to free Morris and get enough money so they can live a life of luxury on the run.

Unfortunately, it's been delayed for several years for a variety of reasons, and the latest is a legal snafu between its US distributor, Consolidated, and EuropaCorp, the financial backing company started by Luc Besson. The ongoing legal shuffle about finances and they said/we said court tussles is summed up over at Reuters; basically, EuropaCorp says that Consolidated owes them $3 million, Consolidated says EuropaCorp didn't live up to its end of the bargain, and EuropaCorp struck back with a lawsuit "alleging breach of contract and copyright infringement." In April, Deadline reported that EuropaCorp was actually working out a deal with Newmarket to distribute the movie.


Still with me? The latest is that a California judge has sided with EuropaCorp, issuing a preliminary injunction stopping the release of Morris for the time being; the case is headed for arbitration.

Consolidated is apparently aiming for an October release, but if we've learned anything, it's that it will probably be a long time until we get to see what sounds like a cool crime film with a romantic twist, and another chance for Carrey to show off his ability to pull off a more serious movie.

-Hopefully this gets resolved soon...thoughts?

6 comments:

  1. I totally agree. What's even more baffling is that the movie opened about a month ago in several european countries to mixed rewievs, with the cast getting moderate praise.

    So it's not because the film is terrible, it's not because the cast is horrible and I can't imagine that the reason is that it's too controversial.

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  2. It's getting to the point where I can't remember a time when the release of this film wasn't in trouble.

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  3. Hr. Cules- Indeed, it's certainly not a quality issue.

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  4. Looks like my premonition from back in April is one step closer to coming true. As a reminder:

    "Mmm, I know what's gonna happen here. They'll give us another fake release date or two that gets pushed back, maybe quietly release it in a small handful of theaters a la Killshot, and then, just as we've forgotten all about it, I'll notice it sitting on the shelf at my local Blockbuster and wonder what I missed."

    In short, abandon all hope ye who hope to see this movie anytime in the near future. Even if it finally does come out, there's no way it's going to be good enough to justify all the waiting, as seems to be confirmed by the aforementioned reviews from Europe and Sundance.

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