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Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor star in the movie about the con-man currently serving 144 years in a Texas prison. That’s nearly as long as it took for the film to see the light of day in the U.S.
And who knows, perhaps one day there will be a movie (or at least extensive DVD extra) about the protracted process involved in getting I Love You Phillip Morris into American theaters. Carrey and McGregor play gay lovers and the sex scenes are said to have been a mitigating factor in the lengthy wait. Lewis Tice, director of publicity and marketing at TLA Releasing, told the Times of London that he thought the graphic content had turned off distributors. “The depiction of the sexual activity was far more than I’ve ever seen in a mainstream film with a mainstream celebrity,” he said.
(See TIME’s top 10 movies of 2009.)
The movie premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and did open on schedule internationally, grossing around $17 million. But plans to have a simultaneous domestic release didn’t exactly pan out: the original distributor, Consolidated Pictures Group, missed the original Feb. 12 2010 release date, and two subsequent slots (March 26 and April 30). Proposed summer release dates never transpired (in part due to worries that repeated delays would reflect badly on it) and that’s to say nothing of the financial wrangling between Consolidated and EuropaCorp, the financial backing company started by Luc Besson, which also has a stake in the movie.
(See pictures of Ewan McGregor.)
But the film is now, if you will, out and is technically in time for the Dec. 31 Oscar cutoff date, which makes it eligible for those little gold men. You’d imagine that the many people involved in I Love You Phillip Morris would just be happy with film fans finally getting the opportunity to see it rather than worrying about hiring tuxedos for next year’s Academy Awards.