The sticky matter of releasing B- gay movie I Love You Phillip Morris in the U.S. is taking on more twists and turns than the true story on which the movie is based. In fact with its tally of failed break-out attempts now standing at 3, the release schedule of this film is catching up titular Phillip Morris’ record.

I reported only a few days ago that the movie’s release had been shelved for the third time, most likely indefinitely, after getting shunted from an original Feb 12 opening, then from a revised March 26 bow. This announcement was quickly followed by news of yet another revised release date of July 30, only for this to get nixed in further developments today.

Latest twist is that Euro production company behind the movie, EuropaCorp, have lost patience with U.S distributor Consolidated Pictures Group and are trying to grab the movie back. Consolidated remain firm that they WILL release this gay movie, however, with one of their bigwigs commenting “We’re the distributors right now, we have a contract and we’re asking Europa to deliver certain things. We’ve hired legal counsel, and if we need to go to arbitration, we will. We plan to distribute this film.”

So things might get ugly. EuropaCorp’s beef is that CPG had agreed to a minimum marketing spend of $8 million to launch the movie in North America and obviously nothing close to that amount has been spent.

Hopefully all companies involved will sit down and work this thing out. The real losers are audiences who won’t get to see I Love You Phillip Morris any time soon. If I was being really cynical I would suggest that CPG are creating a load of buzz and newsworthyness without spending a penny, but that would be a bit cynical wouldn’t it?