After the fall of communism, the Czech filmmaker Jiří Menzel attempted to make a film from I Served the King of England. Menzel had in the past directed several films based on Hrabal's stories, such as Closely Watched Trains and Larks on a String. The struggle to get the film made in the transformed film industry became much publicized, and culminated in 1998, when Menzel, after hearing his producer had sold the rights, attacked the producer at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and beat him with a big stick. The stick was later sold at auction. The film rights were passed between different producers, and at one point the story was under development to be turned into a television soap opera. In the early 2000s, a film was under development by the writer-director duo Petr Jarchovský and Jan Hřebejk.[3] In the end Menzel did direct the film. A co-production between Czech, Slovak, German and Hungarian companies, I Served the King of England premiered in the Czech Republic on 21 December 2006.[4]
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