Satan ready for close-up in "Master" adaptation

By Gregg Goldstein

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Mikhail Bulgakov's satanic novel "The Master and Margarita," an inspiration for the Rolling Stones tune "Sympathy for the Devil," is being turned into a movie, two decades after Roman Polanski attempted to bring it to the big screen.

Los Angeles-based Stone Village Pictures has optioned the late Russian writer's once-banned book in a deal potentially worth in the low seven figures if the project goes ahead.

"Master and Margarita" begins in pre-WWII Moscow, where the devil appears as a mysterious man who insinuates himself into a literary crowd. Amid a series of deaths and disappearances, the devil brings together the title characters, a despairing novelist and his devoted but married lover. The story shifts to the setting of the master's rejected novel, Jerusalem in the time of Pontius Pilate, and then to a supernatural world where satanic forces have taken over Margarita's life.

Bulgakov finished the book shortly before his death in 1940, but in part because of its allusions to Stalin's regime, it was banned until a two-part, censored version was published in 1966 and 1967. In 1968, Stones frontman Jagger was inspired by the book, as well as such events as the Kennedy assassinations, to write the lyrics for "Sympathy for the Devil." The recording process was immortalized on Jean-Luc Godard's movie of the same name.

Polanski adapted the novel in the late 1980s and was set to direct before Warner Bros. reportedly pulled the plug because of budgetary concerns. The book was adapted into a Russian TV miniseries in 2005.

Stone Village now is hunting for a writer to adapt it from the uncensored manuscript.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter