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| Toronto cancels London Fields premiere after director Mathew Cullen sues producers | |
| (about 9 hours later) | |
| The world premiere of the star-studded adaptation of the Martin Amis novel London Fields has been cancelled after reports emerged that the film’s director, Mathew Cullen, is to sue the film’s producers for fraud, claiming they have been marketing the murder mystery using his name despite debuting a version at the Toronto film festival that he had nothing to do with. | |
| Cullen’s film, which stars Billy Bob Thornton, Amber Heard and (in a cameo role) her husband, Johnny Depp, was due to premiere at Toronto on Friday. In a statement, the festival said: “We have recently learned of a legal matter that has arisen between the director and the producers of the film London Fields ... [and] with uncertainty surrounding the creative vision of the version of the film scheduled to be screened on September 18th, we feel it is only appropriate that we remove this film from the Festival lineup.” | |
| The film had received mixed reviews from critics after its press screening earlier in the week, though Variety suggested the film-makers genuinely deserved “credit for making it this far – sometimes you have to try to adapt a seemingly unadaptable book just to learn how truly unadaptable it is”. | |
| According to Deadline, Cullen is seeking $1m for fraud, misappropriation of name and likeness, material failure of consideration and unfair competition, and hopes to take the case to trial. “In this case, the defendant producers have tampered with plaintiffs’ work as director of the film,” reads the suit. “None of the revisionary elements that defendants have interjected into the film appear anywhere in the script. Nor do they have any place in the film, at least not the one that plaintiffs were asked to direct. | According to Deadline, Cullen is seeking $1m for fraud, misappropriation of name and likeness, material failure of consideration and unfair competition, and hopes to take the case to trial. “In this case, the defendant producers have tampered with plaintiffs’ work as director of the film,” reads the suit. “None of the revisionary elements that defendants have interjected into the film appear anywhere in the script. Nor do they have any place in the film, at least not the one that plaintiffs were asked to direct. |
| “Among other things, these elements include incendiary imagery evoking 9/11 jumpers edited against pornography, as well as juxtaposing the holiest city in Islam against mind-control. No cast or crew member signed up for this, nor did plaintiffs. But defendants insist upon doing this, and more, in the names of plaintiffs and others, notwithstanding their objections to the theft of their identities and the false, distorted and perverted associations that defendants are imposing upon them.” | “Among other things, these elements include incendiary imagery evoking 9/11 jumpers edited against pornography, as well as juxtaposing the holiest city in Islam against mind-control. No cast or crew member signed up for this, nor did plaintiffs. But defendants insist upon doing this, and more, in the names of plaintiffs and others, notwithstanding their objections to the theft of their identities and the false, distorted and perverted associations that defendants are imposing upon them.” |
| Continues the suit: “To accomplish this feat, defendants have perpetrated one fraud after another, from the hiring of plaintiffs based upon false promises, to the ongoing marketing and promotion of their rendition of the film as something which it is not – a film directed by Mathew Cullen.” | Continues the suit: “To accomplish this feat, defendants have perpetrated one fraud after another, from the hiring of plaintiffs based upon false promises, to the ongoing marketing and promotion of their rendition of the film as something which it is not – a film directed by Mathew Cullen.” |
| The lawsuit is targeted at producers Jordan Gertner and Christopher Hanley, whose wife, Roberta, wrote the script for London Fields. | The lawsuit is targeted at producers Jordan Gertner and Christopher Hanley, whose wife, Roberta, wrote the script for London Fields. |
| London Fields centres on a beautiful clairvoyant, Nicola Six (Heard) who knows the time and place of her murder, on the eve of her 30th birthday, but isn’t sure whether it will be committed by posh pretty boy Guy Clinch (Theo James) or darts-obsessed working class wideboy Keith Talent (Jim Sturgess). The story is told from the point of view of terminally ill unreliable narrator Samson Young (Thornton), an American writer who has moved to London in a last-ditch attempt to cure his chronic writer’s block. | London Fields centres on a beautiful clairvoyant, Nicola Six (Heard) who knows the time and place of her murder, on the eve of her 30th birthday, but isn’t sure whether it will be committed by posh pretty boy Guy Clinch (Theo James) or darts-obsessed working class wideboy Keith Talent (Jim Sturgess). The story is told from the point of view of terminally ill unreliable narrator Samson Young (Thornton), an American writer who has moved to London in a last-ditch attempt to cure his chronic writer’s block. |
| The New York Times reports that Depp, Heard, Thornton and Sturgess had written to the producers objecting to the cut that debuted at Toronto. The newspaper suggested it was not certain that any would attend this weekend’s premiere, though Christopher Hanley told the Times that Thornton and Heard were contractually obliged to support the film. | The New York Times reports that Depp, Heard, Thornton and Sturgess had written to the producers objecting to the cut that debuted at Toronto. The newspaper suggested it was not certain that any would attend this weekend’s premiere, though Christopher Hanley told the Times that Thornton and Heard were contractually obliged to support the film. |
| Related: London Fields review: Martin Amis gets the Guy Ritchie treatment | Related: London Fields review: Martin Amis gets the Guy Ritchie treatment |
| In the same story, Hanley denies allegations that Cullen, a video director and protege of Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro who had never before made a feature film, had not been paid his $300,000 fee, and said the director had failed to deliver his version of the film on deadline. It is understood Cullen has been working on his own cut, but Hanley said producers had never seen it. “I have been through creative battles with every film we have made with every director,” Hanley is quoted as saying. | In the same story, Hanley denies allegations that Cullen, a video director and protege of Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro who had never before made a feature film, had not been paid his $300,000 fee, and said the director had failed to deliver his version of the film on deadline. It is understood Cullen has been working on his own cut, but Hanley said producers had never seen it. “I have been through creative battles with every film we have made with every director,” Hanley is quoted as saying. |
| Hanley is a well-known figure within the independent film world and has helped bring celebrated examples of offbeat cinema such as Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers and Mary Harron’s much-praised Christian Bale-led adaptation of American Psycho to the big screen. | Hanley is a well-known figure within the independent film world and has helped bring celebrated examples of offbeat cinema such as Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers and Mary Harron’s much-praised Christian Bale-led adaptation of American Psycho to the big screen. |
| However, the Guardian’s Henry Barnes suggested London Fields would be unlikely to achieve a similar cult status to Hanley’s other films. “Novelistic, rich and awfully silly, London Fields – like Ben Wheatley’s take on High Rise – is a long-awaited adaptation of a popular and gloomily prophetic book that seems unnecessary,” he writes. “The timeline’s been tugged (Amis’s book took place in 1999, this feels contemporary) and the slippery tone of the novel is bullied by Cullen into a film that settles for montages: of nuclear testing, War of the Roses knights and trashy sports broadcasts. What starts as a Crimes of Passion-style sex noir transmutes pretty quickly into a British gangster flick with psychedelic trimmings.” | |
| The film was, however, well-reviewed by Screen Daily, which called it a “lushly ambitious debut feature from Matthew Cullen” which “captures some of the swashbuckling, smugly self-regarding spirit of the novel”, and suggested it might indeed have cult appeal. | |
| Amis himself has also praised the adaptation. “I was relieved and pleased,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “I thought it had a lot of atmosphere, terrific performances. It keeps the darts, and it keeps the doomy atmosphere of mutual assured destruction.” | Amis himself has also praised the adaptation. “I was relieved and pleased,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “I thought it had a lot of atmosphere, terrific performances. It keeps the darts, and it keeps the doomy atmosphere of mutual assured destruction.” |
| Deadline reported on Wednesday that studio Lionsgate had bought the film for distribution in a “low-seven-figure” deal despite the ongoing legal issues. A spokesman for the Hanleys’ production company, Muse, said the film-makers had no comment on recent reports. | Deadline reported on Wednesday that studio Lionsgate had bought the film for distribution in a “low-seven-figure” deal despite the ongoing legal issues. A spokesman for the Hanleys’ production company, Muse, said the film-makers had no comment on recent reports. |