 Although the film was shown at the Venice Film Festival and had an  official release in the UK in 2006, the movie was not released in  the US for years. This was mainly due to the fact that MGM was  bought by a consortium headed by Sony in 2005, which led to a legal  mess of whom, either MGM or Sony has the rights to the movie. In  August 2007 director John Turturro (qv) decided to distribute the  movie with his own money.