Fans of Bruce Robinson’s cult comedy Withnail And I will either be thrilled or disappointed at the news that, contrary to recent news reports, the film is not heading for the London stage.
It was widely stated that Jude Law was set to play Withnail in a West End adaptation of the 1987 film, but according to Withnail himself this isn’t the case at all.__”Bruce Robinson called me up about this immediately, and he said, ‘Do you know anything about this?’, and I said, ‘No, no, nothing at all,’” says Richard E Grant. “The guy is a producer, I think he has bought the film and he owns the rights to that but he doesn’t own any rights to turn it into a theatre play. So it’s pure fantasy and Bruce Robinson said over his dead body, it’ll never happen. He’ll sue him.”
Talking at an interview for his new film Wah-Wah, based on his childhood in Swaziland, Grant said that although the film had been put on stage before in a 1999 production in Brighton, Bruce Robinson has never let anyone do a professional production and isn’t likely to give permission now. ”I think he’s allowed students to do it. But he hasn’t done an adaptation of it,” says Grant. “I think that is hugely to do with the fact that they never asked him. He doesn’t own the rights, this producer to a stage version of it.”
“It’s exacerbated by the fact that Bruce Robinson is still owed £35,000 for, out of his own pocket, paying for the last day of filming, so he’s never earned any money out of the DVD or video sales of the last 18 years in the film, because it was sold on to somebody else. So he is justifiably raw about that. Hearing somebody saying that they’re going to do a play, and that they’re casting Jude Law is just fanciful.”