“The Master and Margarita” filmmaker Michael Lockshin is locked in a legal battle over his blockbuster Russian-language adaptation of the celebrated Soviet novel, with the director accusing two producers of blocking his efforts to bring his movie to U.S. cinemas.
The lawsuit, which was filed by sales agent Luminosity Pictures and shared with Variety, alleges that producers Svetlana Migunova-Dali and Grace Loh, who are planning their own English-language adaptation of the book, cannot prove legitimate ownership of the rights to the novel.
The suit also contends that “The Master and Margarita” — which was first published in the 1960s — is in the public domain, “ensuring that neither this group nor anyone else can block the film’s release,” according to Lockshin.
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With the director expecting a court date to be set in the coming weeks, producers Migunova-Dali and Loh are firing back, with their lawyer dismissing the case as a “sham” and insisting that “Luminosity should withdraw its frivolous complaint now before this blows up in their face.”
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The dispute marks the latest plot twist for Lockshin’s big-budget adaptation of the iconic novel, which was written by the Kyiv-born Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov and published posthumously in the 1960s. It is widely considered one of the great works of 20th-century literature.
Numerous attempts at adapting “The Master and Margarita” have been thwarted over the years, with Lockshin, a U.S. citizen who was raised in the Soviet Union, telling Variety he was fully aware that “Bulgakov’s novel has a reputation for being cursed and impossible to adapt.” Roman Polansky, Federico Fellini, Terry Gilliam and Baz Luhrmann are among the filmmakers who have reportedly tried and failed.
Yet when production wrapped in 2021 and Universal Pictures came on board to distribute the film, Lockshin says he “truly believed we had broken the curse.”
That, however, is when the director says the “real battle” began.
Following Russia’s Feb. 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Lockshin’s outspoken stance against the war, the film was trapped in limbo, “ironically mirroring the fate of Bulgakov himself and the protagonist of my film, both of whom faced censorship and persecution by the Soviet state,” the filmmaker says.
Upon its release in Russia last January, “The Master and Margarita” quickly shot to the top of the box office, grossing more than 600 million rubles ($6.7 million) in its first week in theaters. It would go on to rake in close to $28 million in Russia and CIS territories — yet not before Lockshin became the subject of a vicious smear campaign led by pro-war propagandists, online trolls and cronies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The director’s name was removed from the film’s credits, even as he and his family were personally targeted in the attacks.
The controversy and the film’s box-office success nevertheless sparked interest from Western distributors. However, the movie’s rights remained trapped in Russia for the better part of a year, thwarting the director’s efforts to bring his film — a stinging critique of authoritarian rule — to foreign audiences.
The impasse appeared to be broken in late 2024, when U.S.-based sales company Luminosity Pictures came on board as a sales agent, putting what Lockshin thought was an end to “a long and grueling process.”
That’s when producers Migunova-Dali and Loh stepped in, claiming that they’d acquired the rights for their own English-language adaptation, blocking Lockshin’s film from a potential U.S. release and setting up a legal showdown between the filmmakers.
Luminosity’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, casts doubt on Migunova-Dali and Loh’s claim to the book’s rights, resurfacing a decades-old controversy that allegedly derailed Luhrmann’s own plans to adapt the novel last year, as Variety previously reported.
According to the outcome of a lawsuit brought by Bulgakov’s purported heirs, the book’s first publication did not comply with U.S. copyright law, causing it to fall into the public domain. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and formation of the Russian Federation, various international laws were enacted resulting in copyright being restored to the work, which eventually passed to Sergey Shilovsky and his sister Daria Shilovskaya.
The Shilovskys are not direct descendants of the author but claim to have inherited the book via their grandmother, who was Bulgakov’s third wife. Despite this, the duo has been fiercely protective over Bulgakov’s work. In 2014 they launched a lawsuit in New York over an English translation of the book published while it was out of copyright. (The court did not question the Shilovskys’ ownership over the rights but found in the publisher’s favor). A completed 1994 Russian version of the work by Yuri Kara was also reportedly derailed over the rights issue.
Despite the uncertainty, Lockshin insists that “after extensive legal research,” Luminosity is able to prove that “The Master and Margarita” is in the public domain, “exposing the fact that [Migunova-Dali and Loh] have no legitimate claim to the rights,” he says.
George G. Braunstein, of Braunstein & Braunstein, who represents Migunova-Dali and Loh, disputes that notion, telling Variety the novel “is protected by all provisions of United States copyright law” and insisting that Luminosity’s lawsuit “is built on blatant falsehoods, outright fabrications and a desperate attempt to claim rights Luminosity simply does not have.”
“Our clients will not be bullied, and we will not allow this fraud perpetrated by Luminosity to go unchecked,” says Braunstein. “We will pursue every legal remedy available to expose and dismantle Luminosity’s frivolous lawsuit, including requesting sanctions against Luminosity and their law firm for knowingly bringing false claims in United States District Court.”
The filmmakers will now look to settle their dispute in court. While the battle to distribute the film in English-speaking territories is heating up, “The Master and Margarita” has already secured distribution in Italy (BeWater), Germany and Austria (Capelight), where the film will be released theatrically in May.
Lockshin, meanwhile, remains confident that the “curse” has been broken, and that his Russian blockbuster will finally reach U.S. audiences.
“Hopefully this should lead to justice and the film being released in the English-language territories later this year,” he says. “This is the final hurdle in what has been an exhausting fight, but we are determined to see it through.”
