This was Bortko's second attempt to make a screen adaptation of Bulgakov's masterpiece.

In 2000 he had already been solicited by the Kino-Most film studio, associated with competing channel NTV; but at the last moment Kino-Most did not reach an agreement with Sergei Shilovsky, grandson of Mikhail Bulgakov's third wife Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, the self-declared owner of the copyrights.

Opponents feared that filming the work for television would sacrifice the layered narrative of the novel and the complexity of the socio-political and metaphysical themes to the popular demands of the broadcast medium.

[2] Despite the fact that the city of Moscow plays an important role in the novel, director Vladimir Bortko opted to shoot the 1930s scenes in Saint Petersburg.

[3] Unlike previous screen adaptations, director Vladimir Bortko followed the novel meticulously.

The setting of a TV-series appeared to be an ideal format to elaborate the complicated, multidimensional work with many different characters.

The film is an adaptation of the novel The Master and Margarita written by the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov.

Despite the length of the TV series, several scenes and characters from the novel were not included in this adaptation.