Trivia / Curse of the Pink Panther

• Billing Displacement: David Niven receives top billing for this film despite his character, Sir Charles Litton, only appearing in a select few scenes.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $11 million. Box office, $4,491,986. While there's some dispute as to whether $11 million was the budget for this film alone or the combined budget for this and the simultaneously-filmed Trail, this film's performance rendered the project as a whole an inarguable money loser, as it failed to even make back its marketing and distribution costs.
• Deleted Scene: A rare press still depicts a scene in an airplane where Sleigh appears to be blowing his nose or wiping his face on the gauze bandaged around a sleeping man's head. Said scene isn't present in the final film.
• Fake Shemp: An uncredited actor plays Inspector Clouseau (whose face is enveloped in shadow) at the beginning of the film and in several other scenes before the Magic Plastic Surgery.
• Franchise Killer: The film received unanimously negative critical reviews and was a box office bomb, killing the franchise for ten years. The next movie, Son of the Pink Panther, was designed to rescue the franchise, but only succeeded in sinking it further.
• Looping Lines: David Niven was in ill health when he did this and Trail (he died soon after) so his voice for this one was dubbed by an uncredited Rich Little.
• Money, Dear Boy: Roger Moore was a close neighbour of David Niven at the time of filming as both lived as tax exiles in Switzerland and had known each other for a number of years. Moore agreed to do this film incognito as a favour to help get the film made and to get Niven, who was in poor health, one last paycheck.
• Permanent Placeholder: While co-writer (and Blake Edwards' son) Geoffrey Edwards voiced the Aldous supercomputer on-set to give the other actors a reference point, the original intention had been for Rich Little to provide Aldous' voice in the finished film, using an impersonation of Paul Lynde. For unclear reasons,^note Though speculated to be because Blake Edwards thought it would have been too obvious that Little was voicing both Sir Charles and Aldous, and/or he realized that Lynde's death the previous year would have rendered the idea in poor taste, something all the more important when you remember that he had just lost a lawsuit brought by Peter Sellers' estate over using his image without permission in Trail. Little's recording for Aldous (if he ever actually made one) went unused, and Geoffrey Edwards remained as his voice in the finished film.
• Role Reprise: Robert Wagner returns as George Lytton.
• Star-Derailing Role: Rising TV star Ted Wass saw his film career die before it could even get off the ground (in his debut movie, no less), and his next movie, Sheena, did not help the situation. His TV career was also heavily damaged. After his stint in Blossom, Wass bailed acting entirely in favor of a TV directing career, which has seen far better success.
• Troubled Production: The film was shot simultaneously with the linking footage for Trail of the Pink Panther, with MGM at war with Blake Edwards over the budget. In her autobiography, Joanna Lumley discusses how the scene with Roger Moore and Ted Wass in her chalet was shot in one take with no rehearsals.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Dudley Moore and Rowan Atkinson were both considered for the role of Clifton Sleigh. However, due to Moore being unwilling to commit to another series after Arthur (1981), and with Atkinson being unknown outside of Britain at the time, neither were chosen. John Ritter was also in discussion for the role, but for unspecified reasons, he was never chosen.
  • After landing the part of Clifton Sleigh, Ted Wass (Soap) was offered a six-picture deal, with the plan being to retire the old 'Panther' characters (Dreyfus, Cato, Professor Balls, Sir Charles and Francois) and for the series to move to the Americas, with Lieutenant Palmyra and Charlie as supporting characters continuing on. Edwards would not have directed the later Wass films (Terry Marcel was slated to helm the next one) and Edwards' son, Geoffrey Edwards and Sam Bernard would have scripted. As soon as the first film's numbers came in, though, these plans were quickly shelved and this film was all that came of them.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Graham Stark, who usually plays Professor Auguste Balls in both Revenge and Son, plays "Bored Waiter" in this film.
  • Joanna Lumley (Countess Chandra) plays a different character than she did in Trail.
  • Robert Loggia, who played a mob boss in Revenge, is the Big Bad Bruno (also a Role Reprise from Trail).