Box office receipts for the dramatic fantasy based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” exceeded 1 billion rubles after a week and a half at the box office. The film was released in cinemas on January 25. Revenue for the first weekend amounted to 418 million rubles. The film has already been watched by more than 2.4 million viewers.

Before the release of the film, actress Yulia Snigir in an interview with Kinopoisk said that she was ready for possible criticism that could fall on the project.

“It seems to me that they will still scold a lot... So I internally prepare myself more for criticism than for praise,” she noted. - (They will scold. -

RT

) because the cat is not like that, and Margarita, they will say, is not as she should be. This is normal - it is impossible to reproduce what the imagination has drawn, it is impossible to please every reader. I read the novel three times, and I also had a pretty colorful picture of everything in my head. I remember that at some point I even heard the smell of the oil that is described in the Yershalaim chapters.”

Nevertheless, the artist’s fears were not justified: the audience rating of the film on the IMDb website is 7.9/10, and on Kinopoisk - 8 points.

  • © Still from the film “The Master and Margarita” (2023)

The plot revolves around the Writer, the author of a play about Pontius Pilate, the performance of which is canceled due to accusations of political and ideological provocation. At a meeting of the literary association, the hero is offered to rewrite the novel in accordance with the political situation in order to bring it closer “to the needs of the people,” but the playwright refuses, and he is expelled from the Writers' Union. A meeting with Margarita encourages him to reveal his creation more widely, and his heroes become new acquaintances of the author, including the mysterious foreigner Woland.

The film takes place in alternative Moscow in the 1930s.

Work on the project began back in 2018. It was planned that the director of the films “Legend No. 17” and “Crew” Nikolai Lebedev would act as director. At that time, a script was written, storyboards were made, and even the main actress was selected for the role of Margarita, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and financial difficulties, filming, scheduled for March 2020, was postponed.

“The director was originally Nikolai Lebedev and he did a tremendous job. There was an idea to attract big Hollywood stars. Kolya wanted Olga Kurylenko for the role of Margarita, she flew in, did tests, they were good, in my opinion. Olga and I became very good friends; she wanted to play this role. They thought about inviting Gary Oldman to play Woland, but he set a fee that we couldn’t afford,” Ruben Dishdishyan, general producer of the film, said in an interview with Vedomosti.

  • © Still from the film “The Master and Margarita” (2023)

In 2021, director Mikhail Lokshin, known to viewers for the adventure drama “Silver Skates,” joined the project. The team, led by a new director, developed a different script, in the center of which Woland appeared. Filming of the film with the working title of the same name took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, as well as in some locations in Croatia.

The central roles were played by Evgeny Tsyganov, Yulia Snigir and August Diehl. In addition, the film stars Yuri Kolokolnikov, Polina Aug, Alexander Yatsenko, Evgeny Knyazev, Dmitry Lysenkov, Marat Basharov, Igor Vernik and Yura Borisov, who voiced the cat Behemoth.

For the first time, the action of Bulgakov’s novel was transferred to the screens by director Andrzej Wajda, who in 1972 shot the film “Pilate and Others - A Film for Good Friday”, taking the biblical line of the work as a basis. In the same year, the film “The Master and Margarita,” a joint production of Yugoslavia and Italy, was released. The director was Serbian director Aleksandar Petrovich, and the main roles were played by Hugo Tognazzi (“Barbarella”) and Mimzy Farmer (“Two in the City”). The literary source also inspired Polish filmmaker Maciej Wojtyszko to create a mini-series (1990).

In 1994, production of the domestic film by Yuri Kara began with the participation of Viktor Rakov, Anastasia Vertinskaya, Mikhail Ulyanov and other artists, but the film was released only in 2011. There is also a serial version of Kara's project.

One of the most successful film adaptations of the work is considered to be the 2005 version by Vladimir Bortko with Alexander Galibin, Anna Kovalchuk and Oleg Basilashvili. On the Kinopoisk portal, the film ranks 70th among the 250 best TV series in the world.