Production of a film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel “Northanger Abbey” has collapsed, leaving crew members owed “potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds”, said Deadline.
The project began as an ambitious reimagining of Austen’s gothic novel but it fell apart before cameras could roll. Some of the “hardest hit” workers have even been “left having to borrow petrol money to return home”, said The Times.
‘Uniquely vulnerable’
“A lack of money is at the root of many of the issues”, as funding “proved catastrophic” for the independent company behind the adaptation of the 19th-century book.
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The £7 million production, “mounted in the UK by a team of inexperienced US producers”, got under way in Bath and Bristol but “fell apart during advanced prep” early last year, said Deadline. The company has collapsed and “failed to deliver on its promises to pay workers what they are owed”, so a “handful” of crew are taking legal action.
It’s thought that around 50 freelancers could be owed up to £200,000 after signing contracts with the independent business Northanger Limited. In a leaked recording, David Alan Ruben, the company’s chief who is also credited as the film’s writer, director and producer, said that its investors had failed to provide funding. “It has been the most brutal, horrible experience, and I’m just so sorry,” he told staff in February last year.
The UK has “no rules” around putting crew cash in an escrow account, so freelancers here are “uniquely vulnerable” when films run into financing issues, said Deadline.
Philippa Childs, head of the broadcasting union Bectu, said that “this kind of thing happens all too often” when production companies commission work without “secure funding for the project in place”.
Austen’s ‘most nuanced’ works
Austen is “one of the most adapted authors of all time” with her life and novels dramatised for film and TV from “every angle imaginable”, said Amy Wilcockson, from Queen Mary University of London, on The Conversation.
But when it comes to “Northanger Abbey” and “Mansfield Park” filmmakers seem “happy to leave these stories be”. “Northanger Abbey” offers a “harsh criticism of the conventions of marriage, wealth and social status faced by young women”, while “Mansfield Park” shows that Austen was “interested in questions of slavery and race”.
Perhaps this “serious and timely subject matter”, which is “unlike the usual” Austen narrative, “puts off filmmakers”, but they’re her “most nuanced works”, which focus “not just on romance” but on society’s “wider issues”. They “deserve their time in the limelight”.
