A film adaptation of Tim Winton's acclaimed novel Breath, directed by The Mentalist star Simon Baker, has run into a messy legal dispute before it has even premiered.
A company that was discussing financing the Australian drama, Arclight Films, is threatening legal action against the production company.
A letter from Los Angeles lawyer Roderick J. Lindblom claims Breath Productions' actions have left it open to compensation of more than $US3.1 million ($3.9 million) plus attorney's fees and costs.
It alleges that Arclight agreed to finance the film through a loan of $3.053 million and a distribution guarantee of $1 million towards the budget of $8.998 million.
But early last year, it says, Breath Productions began manipulating Arclight's position on the film by trying to find a better deal elsewhere.
Breath producer Jamie Hilton rejected the allegations.
"Our advice is that this claim is entirely without merit," he said, adding: "We look forward to bringing Breath to Australian and international audiences."
The dispute is an unhappy development for a film that was shot with high hopes in Western Australia.
As well as directing, Baker plays a reclusive surfer with newcomers Samson Coulter and Ben Spence as two teenagers who form an unlikely bond with him and his wife in the 1970s.
The cast also includes Elizabeth Debicki, Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake.
Baker returned to Australia from living and working in Los Angeles for 18 years to shoot the film, which is based on a novel that won the Miles Franklin award in 2009.
In an announcement at the Cannes Film Festival two years ago, he said he was "beyond excited" to be shooting the film.
"When I first read Breath, I knew I had to somehow make the film," he said. "The gathering storm of the story, detailed and intimate against the power and scope of the rugged setting, struck me as incredibly cinematic."
Hilton, who is best known for The Little Death, is producing Breath with American Mark Johnson, who won an Oscar for Rain Man and two Emmys for Breaking Bad.
Johnson fell in love with the novel and realised it was ideal material for a film while shooting the horror movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in Melbourne eight years ago.
"Its themes were universal yet, for me, it was such a specific Australian story," he said.
Winton's novels have previously been adapted for TV series Cloudstreet and Lockie Leonard and the films In the Winter Dark, That Eye, The Sky and The Turning.
