page_title: Caligula (film)
section_title: Release
hierarchical_section_title: Caligula (film) / Release
caption_attribution_description: LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 07: Helen Mirren attends the Moet British Independent Film Awards 2014 at Old Billingsgate Market on December 7, 2014 in London, England. Photo by See Li
context_page_description: Caligula is a 1979 erotic historical drama film focusing on the rise and fall of the eponymous Roman Emperor Caligula. It stars Malcolm McDowell in the title role, alongside Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Steiner and John Gielgud. It is the only feature film produced by the men's magazine Penthouse. Producer Bob Guccione, the magazine's founder, intended to produce an explicit pornographic film with a feature film narrative and high production values. He cast Penthouse Pets as extras in unsimulated sex scenes filmed during post-production by himself and Giancarlo Lui.
  Guccione hired screenwriter Gore Vidal to draft the film's script and Tinto Brass to direct the film. Brass extensively altered Vidal's original screenplay, leading Vidal to disavow the film. The final screenplay focuses on the idea that "absolute power corrupts absolutely". However, both Brass and Vidal disagreed with Guccione's use of unsimulated sexual content, which Brass refused to film.
context_section_description: A 3 ½ hour cut of the film was shown at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. An edited version had a limited run in a small town near Forli, Italy before opening in Rome on Sunday, November 11, 1979. In Rome, it was the highest-grossing film of the weekend, with a gross of $59,950 from 6 theaters. The film was confiscated by Italian police on November 15 with the district attorney calling many scenes in the film "flagrantly obscene".
  In the United States, Guccione refused to submit Caligula to the MPAA because he did not want the film to receive a rating—even X—which he considered to be "demeaning". Instead, Guccione applied his own "Mature Audiences" rating to the film, instructing theater owners not to admit anyone under the age of 18. The film premiered in the United States on 1 February 1980, at the Trans Lux East Theatre, which Guccione had rented exclusively to screen the film; he changed the theater's name to Penthouse East.
  Rather than leasing prints to exhibitors, the distributor rented theaters that specialized in foreign and art films for the purpose of screening Caligula exclusively in order to keep the film out of theaters that showed pornographic films. In 1981, the Brazilian Board of Censors approved the establishment of special theaters to screen In the Realm of the Senses and Caligula because they were international box office hits.
  Caligula grossed US$23 million at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing pornographic film ever produced independently. The film was a financial success in France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan. A 105-minute R-rated version without the explicit sexual material was released in 1981.
  The script was adapted into a novelization written by William Johnston under the pseudonym William Howard.
caption: Helen Mirren was cast as Caesonia, wife of Caligula. Mirren described the film as  an "irresistible mix of art and genitals".[35]
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