Trivia / Rio Lobo

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $6,000,000. Box office, $4.25 million.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Howard Hawks later said, "I didn't think it was any good." He also blamed the film's poor critical and commercial performance on John Wayne, saying that at sixty-three, Wayne was now too old to carry a movie. He also felt that Jorge Rivero and Jennifer O'Neil to be miscast.
  • Leigh Brackett was brought onto this project after Hawks fired writer Burton Wohl. She followed Hawks' instructions, against her better instincts, to push the story back toward the two earlier Westerns.
    Most of what I did on Rio Lobo was to try and patch over the holes. I was unhappy that (Hawks) went back to the same old ending of the trade.
• What Could Have Been: Howard Hawks had originally planned to re-team John Wayne with Robert Mitchum from El Dorado. Mitchum declined, stating that he'd retired and felt that the film was "a bigger piece of shit than El Dorado.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The script was rewritten throughout production.

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