Which Monty Python film did George Harrison help finance through HandMade Films?

Which Monty Python film did George Harrison help finance through HandMade Films? The answer is Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the 1979 religious satire.

The film’s original backers were EMI Films, but the company withdrew its funding shortly before production was due to begin after executives became nervous about the script’s subject matter. Harrison, a Python fan, and his business partner Denis O’Brien then formed HandMade Films to rescue the project.

Harrison reportedly mortgaged his Friar Park home to help provide the roughly £3 million production budget. Eric Idle later joked that Harrison had paid “the most anybody’s ever paid for a cinema ticket in history.” Harrison also made a brief appearance in the finished film as Mr. Papadopoulos, a crowd member who encounters Brian.

Life of Brian is often mixed up with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was the group’s earlier 1975 film and was not the HandMade rescue project. The later The Meaning of Life was released in 1983, after HandMade had already established itself with other productions.