The muzzling of Michael Winterbottom: how Sony censored Greed

His fashion tycoon send-up, starring Steve Coogan with alarming teeth, was meant to end with shocking figures about workers’ pay. But the studio said no. The director relives a six-month spat.

very year for the past three decades, Michael Winterbottom has made a movie. Britain’s most mercurial director may have hopped between genres like a frog on a bouncy castle, but he has stuck to a strict schedule – inspired, apparently, by the subject of his first film, Ingmar Bergman. (Bergman only agreed to the documentary because he was so tickled by the then 25-year-old’s surname. “It’s the one time it’s been a help,” says Winterbottom. “As a child, it wasn’t the easiest.”)

Now, abruptly, that routine has changed. Winterbottom is on sabbatical. To recover, it turns out, from the past six months, spent unsuccessfully haggling over the final cut of his latest film.


Greed is a boisterous satire largely set during the lavish 60th birthday party in Mykonos (Coldplay, newly built amphitheatre, lion) of a British fashion mogul with deep tan and alarming teeth, based heavily on Philip Green. Steve Coogan stars; David Mitchell plays a journalist roped into writing his biography, who travels to the far east to tour the factories which manufacture the clothes that have made his subject so rich.

The original version of the film ended with a series of cards spelling out how real life is yet more grotesque than fiction. How workers in Myanmar and Bangladesh earn $3.60 and $2.84 a day making clothes for British high street brands, while H&M’s owner, Stefan Persson, is worth around $18bn and Zara’s owner, Amancio Ortega, $67bn.

At the first test screening in March, reports Winterbottom, these cards were a big hit. “People didn’t find the message annoying, they loved it. But, unfortunately, we were told we couldn’t put them in the film.”

This was the decree, he says, of Laine Kline, head of Sony Pictures International, which co-financed Greed with Film4 and is distributing it worldwide. “He was like: I don’t care it’s the most popular bit. We’re not going to have mention of individual brands in those cards or individual billionaires. Because we’re worried about the potential damage to Sony’s corporate relations with these brands.”

Winterbottom took note. Replacement cards were made and test-screened. These, too, he says, went down well with everyone except Kline. The director dug his heels in, but he was…

Full article – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/07/the-muzzling-of-michael-winterbottom-how-sony-censored-greed