• Feb

  13

  Great Expectations film acquired by Louisville company

  Filed under: Central Kentucky Arts News, Film, Louisville; Tagged as: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Hart/Lunsford Pictures, Helena Bonham Carter, Mike Newell, Ralph Fiennes
  
  

  Businessman Ed Hart and former Gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lunsford, prinicpal partners of Hart-Lunsford Pictures, in a 2007 interview with the Herald-Leader at their Louisville offices. © Herald-Leader photo by Maggie Huber.

  Louisville’s Hart/Lunsford Pictures has secured North American distribution rights to a film with a prestigious pedigree that includes one of  Charles Dickens’ best-loved novels.

  The company, co-owned by former U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lunsford, has completed a financing deal for Great Expectations, which was shot in England and is currently in post production. The film was directed by Mike Newell, best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,  and stars Academy Award-nominated actors Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch and Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham.

  Great Expectations has been adapted for film numerous times, the last big-screen release being a 1998 version that modernized the story with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow.

  The film is expected to be released later this year, putting it in the thick of celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth.

  This version was co-financed by the BBC and the British Film Institute. Co-owner Ed Hart, a theme park entrepreneur who came to Kentucky to rescue struggling and now closed Kentucky Kingdom in the late 1980s, said the company is still figuring out how the distribution rights will be handled.

  “We haven’t yet decided if we will sell the rights to one of the many U.S. distributors who have shown an interest or to distribute it ourselves,” he said in a news release.” We might also choose to divide the various ancillary platforms (such as DVD, digital, and television) and sell those separately, while retaining the rights to theatrical distribution. We have plenty of time to formulate a distribution strategy, but our ultimate decision will be based primarily on what’s best for the film.”

  Hart/Lunsford has been involved with numerous films at varying capacities since 2007. It’s latest was last year’s Dirty Girl, which was sold to the Weinstein Company for $3 million, according to Louisville’s Business First.

  
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