Production
Wrestling with Shadows is co-produced by High Road Productions Inc. and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). It was released on VHS format to both the United States and United Kingdom in 1999. It has been available on DVD in the UK since 2004. On February 3, 2009 Wrestling with Shadows : The 10th Anniversary Collectors Edition was released on DVD for the first time in the United States. This 2 disc edition includes the movie, interviews with Bret Hart and director Paul Jay ten years later and "The Life and Death of Owen Hart" documentary.
In an interview featured on the two disc special edition director Paul Jay states that the filmmakers had a contract with McMahon to provide not only stock footage but the waivers for the use of the names and likeness of the other wrestlers featured in the film. After the fallout from Montreal however, McMahon feared how he would be portrayed in the film and refused both. The director goes on to state that WCW contacted the filmmakers and not only offered to pay for the law suit at a cost of ($750,000) They also offered a pay-per view deal for the film and long term distribution on the Turner network. Once McMahon became aware of this the director states that they received a fax from Titan Sports Inc. saying that they would honor their original contract on the condition that the law suit be dropped and they could never sell the film to Turner. Paul Jay said they were told they had a "Slam-dunk" case but when asked about the film, they were told they would most likely be in court three to four years and "There would be no film" even if they won. They chose to make the film and dropped the law suit. The director goes on to state that McMahon also used his reputation to kill some of the distribution deals in the U.S. and overseas.
Read more about this topic: Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)