With a possible legal suit still looming, director Kari Skogland on Tuesday got the go-ahead from her British coproducers to walk up the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival to debut her IRA spy drama Fifty Dead Men Walking.

London-based Future Films, which coproduced Fifty Dead Men Walking with Vancouver-based Brightlight Pictures, and the film’s international distributor HandMade Films, denied claims by the film’s main subject, former IRA mole Martin McGartland, that his moral rights were infringed during the making of the biopic.

McGartland put a cloud over the film late last week with talk of legal action aimed at stopping its impending premiere — complaints which the coproducers have dismissed.

‘The film’s partners have confirmed that any queries relating to the legitimacy of the film are unfounded and that due process has been followed throughout the production,’ the coproducers said in a joint statement.

Without spelling out their contractual rights to fictionalize or dramatize McGartland’s life story in Fifty Dead Men Walking, the coproducers said they acquired the film rights to the original source material, McGartland’s autobiography of the same name. What’s more, the movie is only loosely based on the former IRA infiltrator’s life.

‘The film, although inspired by the contents, is not a representation of Mr. McGartland’s life,’ the coproducers said. On its website, TIFF makes a similar claim that Skogland’s screenplay was ‘inspired’ by the book.

In response, McGartland denied the coproducers’ claims that he was ‘consulted’ during the movie’s production in the fall of 2007.

‘To say I was virtually in consultation with the filmmakers, it’s lies. They didn’t even want to speak to me. I had to badger them,’ McGartland said from an undisclosed location. He lives in hiding for fear of his safety.

On the question of contractual rights, he added: ‘Any suggestion that they have retained all rights, when I have not signed a waiver of my moral rights, is wrong.’

In a separate exchange Tuesday, Stephen Margolis, the film’s executive producer with Future Films, informed McGartland that he would no longer consult with him ‘about the content of the film.’

Margolis also invited McGartland to have his solicitor get in touch with his own lawyer, Simon Baggs of London-based legal firm Wiggin, if he intended to pursue legal proceedings against the Canadian/British coproduction.

McGartland said he needs to see a finished version of Fifty Dead Men Walking before he considers a lawsuit.

‘As soon as I see it, Wiggin will hear from me,’ he warned.

Any eventual legal case will ultimately hinge on establishing the producers’ contractual rights to use creative licence when bringing McGartland’s life to the big screen.

‘It turns on what latitude the producer has to dramatize or fictionalize, and if they have the contractual right to do that. And if he released them from that claim, [McGartland] faces an uphill battle,’ Leonard Glickman, head of the entertainment practice group at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP in Toronto, said.

A standard option agreement for a life story typically contains releases that grant filmmakers the right to fictionalize or modify, and protect against any claim of defamation or infringement.

But McGartland maintains that Skogland, by introducing two fictional scenes in her film that place his character ‘Marty’ at the scene of torture and murder, undermines his own reputation and that of his book by suggesting he helped end lives during the Northern Ireland Troubles rather than save them as he passed information to Britain’s Special Branch.

Despite requests to the producer, no evidence has come forward that McGartland waived his moral rights, or that the option agreement for his book includes rights to dramatize or fictionalize his life story. Moral rights limit a filmmaker’s ability to modify the story in such a way that would hurt the author’s name or reputation.

There is ample evidence, however, that Skogland and McGartland did not see eye to eye on the portrayal of the ‘Marty’ character, even before the film went into production late last year.

In November 2007, Skogland offered McGartland the opportunity to serve as a consultant on the production and post-production of Fifty Dead Men Walking, in part to ease concerns he had over the screenplay.

In return, McGartland was to receive £5,000 and, significantly, agree to ‘assign to us all your rights in the consultancy services provided.’

A November 2007 letter obtained by Playback Daily points to a particular concern for McGartland with the ‘Lisburn pub scene,’ where an IRA informant is tortured and murdered while Marty looks on, that was expressed during a phone discussion between the film’s subject and Skogland.

In the correspondence, Skogland also promised to send McGartland a DVD copy of the edit of her movie before it was finalized to ensure his input was received and his concerns addressed.

McGartland insists he did not sign that letter, or any moral rights waiver.

Besides seeking rights, Skogland’s letter is careful not to offer McGartland any approval rights or creative control over the film, only ‘input’ through weekly phone calls.

If the producers can prove they had final creative say over the project, despite McGartland being granted access to a script and a special screening in London last May, then any case brought against the producers could face an uphill battle.

The original film option rights to McGartland’s book were acquired in June 2006 by Kyle Lundberg of Los Angeles-based Altitude Entertainment, who in March 2007 assigned certain film exploitation rights to Skogland in return for an executive producer credit and compensation.