Netflix pledges to finish last Orson Welles movie

Netflix is to fund the completion and restoration of iconic filmmaker Orson Welles’s last movie. Image: Philippe Bouchon/AFP

Internet streaming service Netflix said Tuesday it would fund the completion and restoration of iconic filmmaker Orson Welles’s last movie, the unfinished “The Other Side of the Wind”.

Shot by Welles between 1970 and 1976 from a screenplay he co-wrote with his lover Oja Kodar, it stars the actress alongside legendary actor-director Peter Bogdanovich, John Huston and Dennis Hopper.

Veteran producer Frank Marshall, who was Steven Spielberg’s right-hand man on many of his biggest movies, worked on the original production and has been at the forefront of efforts to complete it for more than 40 years.

He will lead the project for Netflix in consultation with 77-year-old Bogdanovich, who has numerous acting credits but is best known as the director of drama “The Last Picture Show” and screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” in the early 1970s and “Mask” in 1985.

“The Other Side of the Wind”, a satire of Hollywood, tells of the last days of a legendary director named Jake Hannaford (Huston) as he struggles to forge his last great comeback as a major filmmaker.

Welles, who died in 1985, is a giant of 20th century cinema, thanks to his writing and directing on numerous classics including “Citizen Kane” and “Touch of Evil”, as well as his acting in “The Third Man”.

“I can’t quite believe it, but after 40 years of trying, I am so very grateful for the passion and perseverance from Netflix that has enabled us to, at long last, finally get into the cutting room to finish Orson’s last picture,” Marshall said.

Netflix started streaming TV in the United States nearly a decade ago and has launched in almost every country, ending 2016 with almost 94 million subscribers. JB