February 12th. March 26th. April 30th. July 30th. Just when is “I Love You Phillip Morris” going to get released in North America? The saga behind the release of the Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor starring gay-romantic-conman dramedy is now as sordid as the story in the movie.
Deadline Hollywood reports that Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp, the financiers of the picture, have yanked the domestic rights from tiny distributor Consolidated Pictures Group citing breach of contract. The deal struck when the film was picked up at Sundance was a $3 million guarantee to EuropaCorp for the film a promise of an $8 million marketing campaign by CPG. Apparently, the $3 million guarantee was to be paid upon delivery of the film. Well, apparently EuropaCorp handed over the film 90 days ago, but didn’t receive their minimum payment putting the wheels in motion for CPG to lose the film, but they aren’t going down without a fight.
“We’re the distributors right now, we have a contract and we’re asking Europa to deliver certain things. We’ve hired legal counsel, and if we need to go to arbitration, we will. We plan to distribute this film,” CPG’s Timothy Patrick Cavanaugh.
Further complicating matters is the fact that CPG has already struck deals with Canadian distributor Alliance Atlantis for the film to play north of the border, as well as a DVD deal with Fox to distribute the picture on home video. There’s no word yet if those deals with remain intact or if they will have to be renegotiated.
Quietly coming in to score the film in the wake of this mess is another small, but more firmly established distributor, Newmarket Films. According to sources if EuropaCorp gets the film back in their hands, they hand off the North American rights to Newmarket Films who would release the film this fall.
But all this is a big “if.” Should CPG fight to hang onto the film, “I Love You Phillip Morris” could end up tied up courts for the immediately forseeable future. Our guess is that they will try and get some kind of arbitration deal worked out though if they failed to meet the obligations of their contract, we what EuropaCorp would have to gain out of such a scenario.
We’re definitely curious about the film and hope it finds a release somehow in the near future. But until these legal matters are sorted out, “I Love You Phillip Morris” will remain on the shelf in North America. For now our only look at the film will be the UK trailer which you can check out below: