Greenaway's Tuscan-Shot Drama Stuck in Post-Production Dispute

Three years after filming began on Peter Greenaway's Lucca Mortis, the British director remains in dispute with his producers over which version of the film should be released, according to an exclusive in the Guardian. The film stars Dustin Hoffman and deals with assisted dying, a subject the paper notes is contentious. A separate battle over rights is also ongoing.

The Guardian frames the film as intended to be a swansong for Greenaway, who has long worked with Italian settings and crews. That the project has stalled at the post-production stage rather than in financing or casting is unusual, and the paper reports the disagreement as one of creative control rather than money alone.

Italy's role in the story is as location and labour rather than as protagonist. The film was shot in and around Lucca, in Tuscany, and the delay affects the Tuscan crews, service companies and accommodation providers who worked on it — a reminder that international productions booked into Italian regions are not paid in full until a film is finished.

The Guardian's account is careful about what remains unresolved. It reports a dispute over which cut to release and a continuing rights battle, without stating that either side has won or that a settlement is near. No release date is given. The paper quotes the director's own line — 'Is death necessary?' — as the thematic hook of the piece, framing the film's subject rather than reporting any new production decision.

For the Veneto, the story is a familiar one told from the other side. The region has spent years courting international film and television production, from Venice's Biennale and film festival circuit to location work in the Palladian villas and the Dolomites, on the argument that a shoot brings immediate spend and lasting exposure. The Greenaway case illustrates the second half of that bargain: when a production stalls in post, the exposure never arrives, and the location is never seen.

There is a wider pattern the foreign film press has noted, though the Guardian does not make the comparison here. Italian locations are frequently chosen for their visual legibility — Lucca's walls, Venice's canals, the Tuscan hills — and productions that never reach screens leave that imagery unused. For a region whose tourism economy is built partly on how it looks in other people's films, an unreleased movie is a stranded asset.

What the coverage does not provide is any indication of when the matter will be resolved. The Guardian describes the situation as post-production 'hell' and reports that the dispute is ongoing. Until a version is agreed and rights are settled, the Tuscan shoot remains, from the outside, an expenditure with no visible return — and a caution for regions that count on foreign productions to market them.