New movie picture(s) coming up?

March 15, 2008

Stone Village Pictures

On the “Coming soon” section of its website, production company Stone Village Pictures and producer Scott Steindorff announced that they will make a screen adaptation of The Master and Margarita.

Stone Village Pictures' president Steindorff will produce the film. He will be doing this with his partners Chris Law, Danny Greenspun, Robin Greenspun and executives Scott Lastati and Dylan Russell alongside Michael Lang, who is best known as the co-creator of the Woodstock Festival in 1969.

Stone Village Pictures is a Los Angeles-based independent film and media production company dedicated to bringing intelligent, thought-provoking media, inspired by iconic literature.

Way back when (1980), Roman Polanski aimed to take a shot at the material, but Warners ended up shutting that project down. Now, the door is open for Stone Village Pictures, known from Love in the Time of Cholera, The Human Stain and Penelope, to attempt the first English-language screen adaptation of the book.

Stone Village Pictures is currently in the process of finding a writer to adapt the uncensored Bulgakov novel. To be announced 2010.

Ira Deutchman

I’m not sure on how to link this news item to a similar announcement made by Ira Deutchman Productions. Ira Deutchman, President and CEO of Emerging Pictures, a New York-based digital film production and exhibition company, has been making, marketing and distributing films for twenty-six years, having worked on over 130 films including some of the most successful independent films of all time like My Own Private Idaho, Bitter Moon and A Room with a View.

On the “In development” section of his website, Ira Deutchman Productions also announces the production of The Master and Margarita. Producers would be Stuart Berton, Ira Deutchman, Svetlana Migunova, Nevin Shalit and… Michael Lang - the same as mentioned by Stone Village Pictures.

“Long assumed to be in the public domain, the rights to the book The Master and Margarita, are actually still under copyright because the book was initially banned in the Soviet Union. Many attempts have been made over the years to adapt it into a motion picture, and as a result, the rights became fragmented. Only recently have all the necessary rights been pulled together to bring the film to fruition.”, Deutchman said.

Link to the Stone Village Pictures website

Link to the Ira Deutchman Productions website