When is Shiner going to be released in Britain and has The Debtors been a television film in America, or is that due for a cinema release too?

-- martin wickens (e@ewickens.freeserve.co.uk), June 16, 2001

Answers

Response to release dates

According to the latest Empire magazine, Shiner will get a release in late autumn in the UK - probably September.

The Debtors, however, is unlikely ever to be released. Filmed in 1998, it was bankrolled by Microsoft billionaire and chief software architect, Charles Simonyi, and directed by Evi Quaid (wife of Randy). It's a comedy about a group of people with various addictions who meet up at the tables in Las Vegas, featuring strong performances from Randy Quaid and Michael Caine, who plays a sex- addicted dentist.

Unfortunately, creative differences arose between Simonyi and Evi and resulted in a mammoth court battle, with Simonyi claiming that Quaid had frittered away his $12.8m and that the final product was not what he had agreed to invest in. He succeeded in gaining an injunction against her, which she then ignored and showed the film at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. The litigation was stalled when Randy and Evi Quaid filed for bankruptcy in January 2000, citing a net worth of $50,000 against debts of anything between $1 to 10 million (estimates vary).

With the Simonyi case now postponed indefinitely while the Quaids work their way through the bankruptcy courts, it is unlikely that the Debtors can ever be released without some form of agreement between Quaid and Simonyi. And with the acrimony that exists between them, that's unlikely to happen.

-- Marjorie Johns (marjorie@citizencaine.org), June 18, 2001.