In a court case almost as labyrinthine and complex as his finest films, and costing just as much, the director Francis Ford Coppola has lost a multimillion-dollar battle with Warner Brothers over the making of a film about Pinocchio.
The case is seen as a precedent to what constitutes an agreement between a film company and a director.
Three judges of the California court of appeals sitting in Los Angeles ruled that Warner Brothers was entitled to tell its rivals at Columbia that it already had rights to a Coppola film of Pinocchio, thus warning them off.
The ruling means that Coppola loses a $20m (£14m) award he was given by a jury in 1998.
The saga dates back to 1992 when Coppola, now 61 and the maker of such films as the Godfather series and Apocalypse Now, signed a certificate of employment with Warner Brothers, who hoped to make a live action film of the tale.
But the film did not go ahead, and in 1994 Coppola entered discussions with Columbia. Warner Brothers fired off a letter to its rivals informing them that it already had rights to a Coppola film. Columbia did not make its planned film, and in 1995 Coppola sued Warner Brothers for "tortious interference".
In 1998 a jury awarded Coppola $80m against Warner Brothers - $60m in punitive damages and $20m in compensation.
It decided that Warner Brothers had falsely claimed to have a deal, thus depriving Coppola of his chance to make the film with Columbia.
A judge later dismissed the $60m but left Coppola with $20m in compensatory damages.
Warner Brothers appealed against the ruling and Coppola also appealed to have the $60m award restored. Now the appeals court has decided against Coppola on both counts.
In an 18-page ruling, the court said the Warner Brothers letter did not give grounds for an action.
"We conclude that a reasonable attorney, considering the facts before the court, would believe that Warner had a legally tenable claim in any Coppola Pinocchio project and that such claim was not totally and completely without merit," the judges said.
Warner Brothers had spent around $350,000 on the film and had worked for about two years with Coppola on the project.
Fred Cohen, of Horvitz and Levy, who handled the appeal for Warner Brothers, told the Hollywood Reporter: "The studios are going to be very relieved by this decision. After the jury's verdict, people were nervous about sending these kinds of letters putting others on notice of their rights. This opinion says they don't need to worry about trying to resolve matters informally without a lawsuit."
Variety headlined its report of ruling "Francis Floored".
Coppola's lawyer, Robert Chapman, said he believed that the jury had made the correct decision.
The case will now go to the supreme court, a lengthy procedure.
There are various screen versions of Pinocchio, the most famous being the 1940 Oscar-winning Walt Disney film. A sequel, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, was made in 1987 and a live action version, The Adventures of Pinocchio, directed by Steve Barron, appeared in 1996 in a New Line production with Martin Landau, Jonathon Taylor Thomas, Dawn French and Griff Rhys Jones.
In a Japanese sci-fi film called 964 Pinocchio the hero is a sex slave.