Orson Welles managed to edit 45 minutes of his final film, "The Other Side of the Wind," before his death on Oct. 10, 1985. Another 70 to 80 minutes of unedited film remained, but numerous legal battles kept all the materials necessary to complete the project out of reach.
Royal Road Entertainment has accomplished the feat to gain access to the 1,083 reels of negatives from the "sometimes-warring" rights holders, according to The New York Times. The production company negotiated with Welles' longtime companion and collaborator Oja Kodar, his daughter and sole heir Beatrice Welles, and the Iranian-French production company, L'Astrophore, to retrieve the film from its Parisian storage place.
Royal Road plans to give the film its first official screening by May 6, 2015, the 100th anniversary of Welles' birth. The company will also promote its distribution at the American Film Market in Santa Monica, California next month.
Frank Marshall, a line producer for "The Other Side of the Wind," and Peter Bogdanovich, who stars in the film, will receive the reels in Los Angeles, and finish the movie they last worked on nearly 30 years ago.
"We will set up a cutting room and Peter Bogdanovich and I will assemble the film," Marshall told The New York Times. "We have notes from Orson Welles. We have scenes that weren't quite finished, and we need to add music. We will get it done. The good news is that it won't take so long because of all of the technology today."
"The Other Side of the Wind" is a movie within a movie that starred John Huston as an "aging, maverick director" attempting a comeback, according to the Times. In addition to Huston and Bogdanovich, the film also starred Susan Strasberg and Dennis Hopper. The 75-year-old Bogdanovich is the only star still living.
"It's hard to say why it's coming together now except that everybody realizes that the longer we wait the less people will be around to know Orson's wishes," the 68-year-old Marshall said. "Everybody recognizes that it's the last chance."
