Trivia / Force 10 from Navarone

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $10 million. Box office, $7,100,000.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Robert Shaw said during filming that "I'm seriously thinking that this might be my last film... I no longer have anything real to say. I'm appalled at some of the lines... I'm not at ease in film. I can't remember the last film I enjoyed making."^note And then he died before the film was released
  • While he appreciated what other people were trying to do and felt they had made a decent film, Harrison Ford complained that he really had nothing to do in the film and he couldn't figure out what his character added to it.
• The Other Darrin: Gregory Peck and David Niven do not reprise their roles from The Guns of Navarone (Possibly because it was made seventeen years afterwards, making them too old to play people who should have only aged a matter of months between films at most). Robert Shaw and Edward Fox take the roles of Mallory and Miller, respectively.
• Saved from Development Hell: The film was originally announced in 1967. Alistair MacLean wrote his sequel in 1968 when the original movie was fresher in people's minds. It would take another decade for the film adaptation to reach the screen, by which time interest in a sequel had considerably weakened. This might partly account for the film's less than stellar box office performance.
• Sequel Gap: The film came out seventeen years after its predecessor.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The producers wanted Robert Bolt to write the screenplay but he was busy working with David Lean. Bolt's agent Peggy Ramsey suggested they hire Robin Chapman.
  • Charlton Heston turned down the role of Major Mallory.
  • The role of Maritza was offered to Caroline Munro.
• Working Title: After Navarone.
• Written-In Infirmity: There are numerous mentions of Mallory having an injured leg. In actuality Robert Shaw had injured his knee shortly before filming began and was having difficulty walking without limping, so they simply wrote Mallory's leg injury into the script.

---