Courts pull Finnish movie from theaters
Wow, has anything like this happened before in Finland or the U.S…?
Riisuttu mies (“Man Exposed“), a Finnish feature film directed by Aku Louhimies, is being pulled from cinemas after the Helsinki Court of Appeals ordered screenings to stop. The court found that the film’s producer, Lasihelmi Filmi, had violated the rights of Veli-Pekka Hänninen, the writer of the original screenplay.
The distributor says that it will pull all of the copies of the film, which premiered in September, and that it will also put a freeze on the publication of the DVD version, which was to have gone on sale on February 14th.
In its decision, the Court of Appeals overturned a ruling by Helsinki District Court in May, according to which the producer had not violated the rights of the scriptwriter. The lower court felt that the complaint was premature, because at the time, only a preliminary version of the film was available.
I don’t know if it has happened in the US, yet. Usually it’s lawsuit gets filed, press catches wind then settlement in secret or some thing.
Comment by gopha — Thu, Feb 1st, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
It’s possible the film got censored for political reasons.
Anyway, Phil, are you going to write about the 4th year medical student who was employed (illegally) as a doctor in a finnish health central and got a baby killed? The finest of socialist healthcare… In other news, a maternity ward nurse taped the mouths of infants shut because they kept crying.
Comment by truth — Thu, Feb 1st, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
William Randolph Hearst is known to have tried to use his influence to keep people from seeing Citizen Kane when it came out.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kane2/
Comment by Kimmo W. — Thu, Feb 1st, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
It happened about 100 years ago with F.M. Murnau’s film “Nosferatu”. Bram Stoker’s heirs sued Murnau for the unauthorized use of the book “Dracula”, and won the case. The film was pulled from all UK theatres and all British copies of it were destroyed. The British court’s ruling did not extend to Germany, however, which is how the film survived.
Comment by Anzi — Thu, Feb 1st, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
The screenwriter has also rights. It is his story that is put on screen, not the producers or the directors. If indeed they violated the writers work than that is their own fault.
Comment by Max — Fri, Feb 2nd, 2007 @ 2:55 am
If I’m not completely mistaken as usual, this was a screenplay to begin with, not a novel or something like that. The whole industry would be paralyzed if the writers reserved the right to decide how their texts are adapted to the screen. If unhappy, isn’t the usual thing to do to have one’s name deleted from the titles, not to shoot down the whole production?
Comment by aet75 — Fri, Feb 2nd, 2007 @ 7:50 am
That is because the idiots put a clause in their contract making this possible instead of the usual “rear-light-guarantee”.
Comment by Hank W. — Fri, Feb 2nd, 2007 @ 10:10 am
Is there so little money in Finnish film that a settlement would be out of the question? Or is the screenwriter so full of integrity that he doesn’t want to work in this city again?
Comment by DAVE THE MAVE — Fri, Feb 2nd, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
Yep, this might be a Pyrrhic victory for him… Of course I gather that they really did mangle his text awfully, but shouldn’t that be par for the course in the film industry?
Comment by mjr — Fri, Feb 2nd, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
He’s apparently sold the screenplay to some UK production company.
Comment by Hank W. — Fri, Feb 2nd, 2007 @ 3:35 pm