Director threatens legal action over new `Ulysses' film

A row has broken out over plans to film Ulysses for only the second time since James Joyce's masterpiece was published in 1922.

A new Irish version, which starts shooting next week with Stephen Rea in the role of Leopold Bloom and Angeline Ball as Molly Bloom, is being threatened with legal action by Joseph Strick, who made the first film in 1967. The writer's grandson, Stephen Joyce, is also hostile to the project.

The new film is likely to cause controversy in the Joycean community with its liberal approach to Joyce's depiction of a single day in Dublin in June 1904.

The director, Stephen Walsh, promises the film will be "mainstream cinema" and has cut large sections of Joyce's text. He has also rearranged events, putting Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy at the start, rather than the end, of the action.

"It's funny, Ulysses is considered the most important book of the 20th century and yet nobody has read the damn thing. We're going to open it up to a wider audience," says Mr Walsh.

The film will have "plenty of sensuality" but it won't be "a porno movie", he adds. Joyce's book was forbidden reading in Ireland for decades and Mr Strick's film version received its first public showing here only this year, having been banned for over 30 years.

Speaking from his home in Paris, Mr Strick says he has been advised that Mr Walsh's screenplay contains similarities to his version. "I have warned him that any plagiarism will lead to legal action."

Mr Walsh rejected this, saying he "started from scratch" from the 1922 text and Mr Strick was effectively trying to claim copyright on Dublin.

Mr Walsh says he has spent eight years working on the screenplay, longer than Joyce spent writing the book. Ulysses passed out of copyright in 1991, 50 years after Joyce's death. However, in 1993, EU copyright law was amended and the book came into copyright again.

According to legal advice obtained by Mr Walsh, he is exempted from copyright because he began work on the project before the law was changed. However, he acknowledged that Stephen Joyce "is not supportive" of this view. Mr Joyce declined to comment.

Mr Strick is claiming copyright on his film version, separate from the copyright on the book, running until 2042. "A film has a life of its own, a way of dealing with characters, for example," claims Mr Strick.

"Hamlet is done by many people, but when Kenneth Brannagh did his version, it didn't imitate Laurence Olivier's film. But if they do Ulysses in the same way as I did it, they'll be in trouble."

The producers, Odyssey Pictures, have another hurdle to cross before shooting begins at locations around Dublin on June 25th. A final £500,000 of the £3 million budget is still being sought from investors.