The Hunt for Red October (film) 100 Years...100 Thrills. The Hunt for Red October (film) The Hunt for Red October is a 1990 American espionage submarine film produced by Mace Neufeld, directed by John McTiernan, that stars Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill. The film is based on Tom Clancy's 1984 bestselling novel of the same name. The story is set during the late Cold War era and involves a rogue Soviet naval captain who wishes to defect to the United States with his officers and the Soviet Navy's newest and most advanced nuclear missile submarine. An American CIA analyst
The Hunt for Red October novel as "the most satisfactory novel of a sea chase since C.S. Forester perfected the form". Due to an extensive marketing campaign by the Naval Institute Press for their first published work of fiction, which was initially aimed on the military, the book sold 45,000 copies by March 1985. Clancy said in a 1991 interview: “I thought we’d sell maybe five thousand or ten thousand hardcovers and that would be the end of it. I never really thought about making money.” After Reagan's endorsement, "The Hunt for Red October" topped the national bestseller lists, particularly "The New York Times". It