Fox to Release Bertolucci’s ‘Dreamers’ With NC-17 Rating

After months of discussions, Fox Searchlight Pictures has decided to release Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” with an NC-17 rating, which could make marketing of the movie difficult.

The decision to release the erotic romance in its European version -- with some scenes involving full frontal nudity and explicit sex -- is a gamble because some theaters in the U.S. won’t play NC-17 pictures. Newspapers in Cincinnati, Seattle and Salt Lake City will not run advertisements for such films.

Steve Gilula, head of distribution for Fox Searchlight, said marketers were handling the movie just as they would an R-rated art film. “The Dreamers,” about movie-obsessed teens in 1968 Paris, will open Feb. 6.

Gilula said it had been nearly a decade since a major studio or subsidiary released an NC-17 picture, and that times had changed. “I don’t think the NC-17 has the same baggage it used to have,” Gilula said. “The rating has been unused, so a lot of people don’t really have policies anymore. The context in which this rating was more controversial no longer exists -- porno is no longer in theaters, it’s in the home and on the Internet.”

Because Fox Searchlight and parent 20th Century Fox are signatories of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, Fox Searchlight is required to release all its films with a rating. Most studios have preferred to trim movies to get an R rather than NC-17 rating. Other firms that are not bound by MPAA rules often opt to release a film without a rating.

Bob Berney, who oversaw IFC Films’ release of the unrated “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” said, “We played this movie in malls all over America, and I did not feel we could have done that with an NC-17.

“When it comes to sex [Americans] are pretty prudish and scared,” he said. “When it comes to violence we will take anything.”

Bertolucci said in a statement: “After all, an orgasm is better than a bomb.”

The last time a major studio released an NC-17 picture was in 1995 when Joe Eszterhas’ “Showgirls” caused a furor for explicit scenes of strippers.

Searchlight had specified in its contract that “The Dreamers” had to get an R rating. But the Italian director complained last year that his movie was likely to be “amputated and mutilated” for its U.S. release.

Peter Rice, head of Fox Searchlight, said Bertolucci had overreacted.

“We came to the conclusion that [NC-17] was the right thing to do for the movie. If you go back a generation, there were lots of filmmakers making provocative movies for an adult audience,” Rice said. “We ultimately think that not every movie should be created for 12-year-olds.”

Times correspondent David Gritten contributed to this report.