Two Cuts, No Exit: Greenaway's Film About Dying Is Stuck

When Peter Greenaway's crew first reached Lucca in late 2023, the lead actors were not there.

It was a bad omen that turned out to be mild. The film, first called Lucca Mortis and now also known as Tower Stories, is still unreleased about three years after Greenaway began developing it. According to The Guardian's report of October 9, 2026, two unfinished versions exist, one tied to the director and one to the producers, and a separate fight over who controls the film's rights has not been settled. ^[1]

The director is 84. Dustin Hoffman, the star, turned 89 in September. The Guardian says this could be Greenaway's last feature. ^[1]

A film about an elegant exit

Hoffman plays Jacob Zucchine, a New York writer who was adopted as a child and returns to Lucca to look for his Italian roots. The story is set around the time of 9/11 and follows a man thinking about mortality. Helen Hunt is also in it, according to the website of producer Thom Fennessey, who says he completed the Los Angeles portion of the shoot. ^[1][3]

Greenaway was open about the ambition. At an IDFA event in November 2023, he described the film as asking "is death necessary?" He said it addressed death and the public debate over assisted death, euthanasia and the legitimacy of suicide. ^[1]

He also said what it was not. This was no horror picture of coffins and skulls, he said, but a drama about an older man looking for an elegant way to conclude his life. ^[1]

That is a strange thing to fight over in an edit suite, and a precise one. A cut decides how much agency the old man has, how long the film stays with his reasoning, and whether the ending reads as a choice or a defeat. Those are a director's questions, and the kind he would go to war for.

Who holds the scissors

A first assembly delivered in late 2024 was reportedly warmly received. Since then the film has split in two. One incomplete version is associated with Greenaway, the other with the producers, and the producers' version is said to be further along. ^[1]

Sources close to Greenaway told the Guardian that his contract gave him final cut, and that the producers later made a more commercial edit without him. The producers' position, as the paper reports it, is that they could intervene because the film had gone over budget. Facing East, the production company, did not respond to the paper's requests for comment. ^[1]

The contract has not been published and the size of the overrun is not stated, so both claims remain claims. What is documented is the money in outline. Trade-press reports put the budget at €15 million, with a shoot spread across 25 locations in Lucca. The Guardian says the financing came mainly from Swiss private financiers Jumpy Cow Pictures, with Italian and Dutch tax rebates also involved. ^[1]

A final-cut clause and a budget overrun are old antagonists. The first says the artist decides. The second says that whoever covers the overrun gets a say. Such collisions in film history usually end in a compromise cut, a lawsuit or a director's name coming off the credits.

This one has produced something rarer, a film with two unfinished versions and nobody able to finish either.

People who have seen both cuts describe them as not very different, the Guardian reports, though both remain incomplete. If that is right, the dispute is less about scenes than about who gets to decide. ^[1]

The second fight

Separately, a dispute over control of the film's rights is ongoing. The Guardian does not say which rights are at issue, what either side argues, or whether any court is involved. ^[1]

That second fight may matter more than the first. A film can have a director's cut and a producers' cut and still reach an audience, as long as someone clearly has the authority to release one. If that authority is contested, neither version can go to a festival or a distributor.

A local Lucca publication reported on October 5 that no release date had been announced and that the film remained in post-production. It also recalled earlier hopes of festival screenings and a 2025 release, and none of them came to pass. ^[2]

So a film reported to have cost €15 million, shot on a city's streets with a star in the lead, cannot reach anyone. "Held hostage" is a loaded phrase for a dispute whose legal terms nobody has seen. As a description of where the film stands, it is hard to fault.

The city that lent its streets

Lucca is the third party in all this, and it is not a quiet one. Councillor Remo Santini said the city had spent time and energy helping the production, and had received a private preview some months ago that made a strong impression. ^[1]

Since then, he said, the municipality has repeatedly asked the production and Greenaway for explanations and has not been contacted. Lucca saw the film, liked it, and was then left in silence. ^[1]

The city's relationship with the project was never simple. The Guardian reports that Lucca was not keen to be associated with death, and that the final title was not Greenaway's decision alone. Hence Tower Stories, a name with no death in it. Who has the authority to settle the title is not stated in the reporting. ^[1]

A frustrated member of the production crew, who was not named, told the Guardian the film is a legacy for both Greenaway and Hoffman and needs to be completed and released. ^[1]

What is at stake at 84

Greenaway's career gives the question its weight. The Guardian describes a body of work marked by visual flamboyance, puns and difficult ideas, from The Draughtsman's Contract to The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Prospero's Books. These are films whose character lives in the cutting. A "more commercial" Greenaway film is at best a different film. ^[1]

The subject adds a weight of its own. Greenaway presented this film as a late meditation on how a life might end, and it is now itself stuck in a kind of suspended ending. Two versions exist, each partly made, each held by a different party. Whatever survives of a work in that condition survives as a draft, and drafts are easily lost.

Nothing in the reporting says the producers flinched at the subject. The dispute, as reported, is about money and control. But the subject is why it is hard to shrug off.

The case for the director is not automatic. A final-cut clause, if it exists, is a contract term like any other, and the producers' complaint about the budget may have merit.

Still, the measure of any settlement is not who wins. It is whether the film gets out while its director and its lead actor are alive to stand beside it. On that test, everyone involved is failing for now.

The first real sign of movement would be paper: a published contract, a court filing over the rights, or a festival slot or a distributor's name. Greenaway, Hoffman, Facing East and Jumpy Cow Pictures have not given their accounts in the reporting so far. In Lucca, Santini says, nobody has called back. ^[1][2]