Over the last year, quite a few readers have asked about Peter Greenaway's "Lucca Mortis," starring Dustin Hoffman, Helen Hunt and Sofia Boutella, which was shot almost three years ago and still hasn't been released.
In late 2023, Greenaway and Hoffman, both in their 80s, began work on "Lucca Mortis" in the Tuscan city of Lucca. The film follows Jacob Zucchine, an ageing New York writer adopted as a child, who returns to Italy around the time of 9/11 to trace his roots, and that's when he starts to feel death closing in. Greenaway described it as his long-promised film about death after decades of work about "Eros."
Here's The Guardian tackling the post-production hell this film has been through. The trouble started early. In 2023, truckloads of gear arrived, sets went up, and then everyone waited for weeks before being sent home without shooting. Production finally restarted in early 2024 on a reported €15M budget across 25 locations. The Italian press compared the mood to a Fellini set.
Then the delays piled up and the money ran out. After Greenaway delivered a well-received first assembly cut in late 2024, sources say the producers made their own, more "commercial" cut without him, despite his contract reportedly guaranteeing him final cut. The producers argue the overspend gave them the right to step in.
The result is two unfinished versions of the film, a dispute over who owns the rights, and a new title, "Tower Stories," partly because Lucca didn't want its name associated with death. The city says it has heard nothing from the production despite repeated requests.
The irony is that people who've seen both cuts say they're not very different. Insiders praise the film's visual splendour, operatic set pieces and a moving performance from Hoffman, now 89, in a role that seems partly modelled on Greenaway, now 84.
Every month the film stays shelved, the chance shrinks that either man will be able to promote it. It also raises the question of whether festivals and distributors would take on a Greenaway film that Greenaway didn't sign off on.
Greenaway is, of course, the filmmaker behind "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" (1989). His work has always been visually extravagant, full of wordplay and big ideas. That's why so many people want "Lucca Mortis" finished the way he meant it, as a last statement from one of cinema's true originals.
A 2027 shoot would mean a 2028 release at the earliest. Spielberg and Kamiński, finally out in the snow and fog of the American West? Sign me up.