No longer “Woland”: The film about “The Master and Margarita” was changed the name

The script is still based on Bulgakov’s novel

In 2021, the film “The Master and Margarita” based on the work of the same name by Mikhail Bulgakov was supposed to be released. From the very beginning, surprises accompanied him, as always happened with any attempts to transfer the novel to the stage or film.

Initially, Nikolai Lebedev was supposed to shoot the picture, but he was mysteriously transferred to the Nuremberg trials, where he took the alleged Margarita, Lyubov Aksenova, with him. There were rumors that Danila Kozlovsky would play the Master.

Nikolai Lebedev was replaced by Mikhail Lokshin, and the painting was called Woland. The details were kept secret. To defend the project, the creators of the new version asked to turn off the broadcast before they named the names of the main actors. But something went wrong, the broadcast was not turned off, and everyone who followed it learned that Evgeny Tsyganov and Yulia Snigir will play the Master and Margarita, and the Behemoth cat will be created using computer graphics, and everything will be built on technologies, tested in the film “The Lion King”. It was not known who would play Woland, there was talk that it would be a foreign actor. At the last moment, the cards were revealed: the role of Woland will be played by the German actor August Diehl, who starred in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, who played on the stage of the Berlin theater named after Maxim Gorky.

And now the producers have announced that the film will be called not “Woland”, but “The Master and Margarita”. “We have decided to return to the original, classic title of the project, which we have been working on for several years, in order to combine the power and spirit of the novel with the story that we want to tell the audience in our film”, “Our script is based on Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” , but the authors managed to create their own unique world, which deserved the original name, so “Woland” was born. After we saw the montage, it became obvious that the central line is the love story of the Master and Margarita. It is this love that gives birth to universes and enhances the meanings laid down by Bulgakov, ”their statement says.

The latest film adaptation of the novel was made by Vladimir Bortko in 2005. Before him, Yuri Kara addressed the Master and Margarita in 1994. But his picture came out only in 2011 due to a conflict with the producers. The role of the Master in these adaptations was played respectively by Alexander Galibin and Viktor Rakov, Margaritas by Anna Kovalchuk and Anastasia Vertinskaya.