New plans for a movie?
Since a few days we hear new rumours about another possible screen adaptation of The Master and Margarita. On February 14, 2017, Deadline Hollywood, a website that covers news from the entertainement industry, published an article by Anita Busch, who thought to know that an option on the film rights has been taken by Svetlana Migunova-Dali, co-owner of the Moscow based production house Logos Film Company, and Grace Loh, who is the head of the production company New Crime Productions in Hollywood.
Both ladies would produce the film together, with the help of Nevin Shalit, Andrey Furmanchuk and Michael Lang, the co-creator of the legendary Woodstock Music & Art Festival in 1969.
At a time when the internet is teeming with fake news, we do not know to what extent we should take this article seriously. And if this film will be made anyway. Indeed, on May 14, 2010, Sergey Shilovsky, the grandson of Elena Sergeevna, the third wife of Mikhail Bulgakov, had announced that he had signed a contract to grant the film rights of The Master and Margarita to the American production company Stone Village Pictures of Scott Steindorff. When he announced the signing of the contract, Shilovsky had added that «it will not be allowed, in any country, to make another screen adaptation of The Master and Margarita in the next ten years ». We don’t know how this can be reconciled with the news of Deadline Hollywood. Moreover, Hollywood insiders are doubting the feasibility of such project. «No studio will touch this now», it is said, thereby refering to the problems which Hollywood production houses are confronted with when they want to do shootings in Russia.
Anyway, whatever will happen, as soon as we know more about it, you can read it here.
Grace Loh
Svetlana Migunova-Dali