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Rights Wide Shut?
Judy Quinn -- 1/26/98
Expect an interesting movie tie-in battle in the next few months as eccentric director Stanley Kubrick reportedly wraps on his Eyes Wide Shut, his two-years-in-the-making Warner Bros. thriller starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and the first since his Full Metal Jacket. Rumor has it that Kubrick has based the psycho-sexual drama, tentatively scheduled for release next fall, on Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle, currently in print in the U.S. (as Dream Story) from Sun &Moon Press. Neither Sun &Moon Press publisher Doug Messerli nor Barbara Perlmutter, U.S. rep for German publisher Fischer Verlag, which publishes Schnitzler, would comment on whether or not Kubrick acquired dramatic rights to the book (postwar copyright confusions are being used as the excuse here) and if Sun &Moon will be allowed to retain its rights license. In the meantime, however, tiny Sun &Moon is getting a bonanza from the buzz: in the last few months it has sold close to 1000 copies of the book, whereas distributor Constortium usually sells about 800 in a typical year. Sun &Moon also has just gone back to press for 2000 more in part to fill back orders. Sources say it's not hopeful that Sun &Moon can use Cruise/Kidman movie art on the book's cover in the future; chances are a movie tie-in edition, perhaps with a new translation, will be acquired and released by a major trade house.

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