Emma Thompson wins Effie lawsuit Film about love triangle between John Ruskin, Effie Gray and John Everett Millais to go ahead after US court clears Thompson of plagiarism (GUARDIAN)

Ben Child

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 December 2012 11.44 EST

Green light … Emma Thompson's period drama Effie is set for a May release. Photograph: Juan Naharro Gimenez/WireImage

Emma Thompson has won a landmark US ruling allowing her to move forward with her forthcoming period drama Effie, about the famous love triangle between art critic John Ruskin, his teenage wife Effie Gray and pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais.

Thompson had been accused of plagiarism by the American writer Eve Pomerance, author of two unfilmed screenplays about the Victorian scandal titled The King of the Golden River and The Secret Trials of Effie Gray. The timing of the ruling in the Oscar-winning actor's favour could not be more vital, since Effie is due for release in May, with Thompson herself joining Dakota Fanning, Orlando Bloom and Robbie Coltrane in the cast.

New York district judge J Paul Oetken noted the difficulty of determining copyright infringement in the historical fiction realm where US laws did not protect repetition of known historical facts, only the purloining of imaginative ideas relating to them. In a 61-page ruling, he granted Thompson's production company Effie Film a declaration of non-infringement, the British writer having sued following threats of litigation from Pomerance.

READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/dec/19/emma-thompson-wins-effie-lawsuit

Keira Knightley and Dakota Fanning are duelling Effies

2:00 PM on 11.08.2011 | Xander Markham

 

Dakota Fanning is currently shooting a period drama about the life of Euphemia 'Effie' Gray, an 1850s woman who was married as a teenager to art critic John Ruskin. They subsequently divorced when he refused to consummate the marriage and she instead hitched up with artist (and Ruskin protégé) John Everett Millais.

Upon hearing that there existed a period drama she wasn't starring in, Keira Knightley immediately started talks to star in Untouched, a rival production to Fanning's Effie. Maybe it didn't happen quite that way - although the good lady Knightley is awfully keen on her period dramas - but this looks to be another case, à la Snow White, where two projects in development coincidentally happen to be tackling the same material. Effie Gray's story has already been told in novels, plays, television and operas, so cinema clearly had some catching up to do.

n bCentral to the story's mystery is why Ruskin refused to consummate the marriage, supposedly because something about Gray's body disgusted him. Some theories point to it being her menstrual blood, which really would make this a period drama.

(I'm so sorry)

[Indiewire, via EMPIRE]

FliXist

Keira Knightley Set to Star in a Different Effie Gray Biopic 'Untouched'

First Showing

November 7, 2011
Source: Thompson on Hollywood
by James Wallace

Surprise! Serial period piece actress Keira Knightley is in talks to star in Untouched, a biopic on the life of artist muse Effie Gray. Gray was married to the famous 19th century art critic John Ruskin but later annulled the unconsummated marriage (because Ruskin apparently though Gray's body to be undesirable) to be with his protege, painter John Everett Millais. Brazilian filmmaker Andrucha Waddington (House of Sand) will direct the period romance, with a script from newcomer Aleksandra Crapanzano. Coincidentally, this isn't the only film in production centering around Gray's complicated and tumultuous romance life.

I guess this is the Armageddon/Deep Impact match-up of dramatic period-piece love triangle films, as actress/writer Emma Thompson and her husband Greg Wise are currently making an Effie Gray biopic with director Richard Laxton - simply titled Effie - which stars Dakota Fanning in the title role. IMDb currently has the production status listed as "filming" and Thompson on Hollywood states that it was "due to go into production mid-October," so we're not sure what the deal is with that project. Unsurprsingly, Knightley currently stars in yet another period piece, David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method. And wouldn't you know that she's stuck in the middle of another master/apprentice relationship, this one between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). I swear, this girl has more antique triangles than a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store.