DIRECTOR AND WEINSTEIN BATTLE OVER FINAL CUT OF GRACE OF MONACO

Harvey Weinstein has battled directors in the past over his decisions to re-edit their films to boost their commercial appeal, but his current battle with French director Olivier Dahan over Grace of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly/Princess Grace, has become a real doozy, with Dahan now threatening to release his own cut of the film. In an interview (headlined “Disgrace of Monaco”) with the French daily Liberation, Dahan said that he felt that Weinstein was “blackmailing” him “pure and simple” to sign off on his cut. “There are two versions of the film so far, mine and his,” he said. “It is catastrophic.” Asked to comment on Weinstein’s recent remark that he was delaying the film because it “wasn’t ready,” Dahan maintained that the delay “has almost nothing to do with the film.” In the end, he said, “it has everything to do with cinema as an industry. They want a commercial film, one that appeals to the grass roots, removing anything that is too deep, removing all that is cinema, everything that makes life. … Decisions are made regarding marketing, output, etc. — all that is actually boring and pollutes a film that others have also seen and like a lot.” Weinstein, he indicated has “a misplaced ego problem, a history of manipulation and power.” As part of the marketing for the film, Dahan observed, “We made a trailer before the editing was done. But in this case we made a trailer that did not fit the movie and now they try to make the film look like the trailer. This is absurd.”