Captain Blood (1935 film) was $1,242,000. The lead role was originally offered to Robert Donat, who had starred in the successful 1934 film "The Count of Monte Cristo". The asthmatic Donat turned down the role, concerned that the action sequences would be too strenuous for him. A series of screen tests with various actors led to an unknown Australian actor named Errol Flynn. In January 1935, Warner Bros. signed the young actor and brought him to Hollywood after seeing him in a British B picture "Murder at Monte Carlo". For the female lead role, Jean Muir was originally picked to play opposite Donat, but
Captain Blood (novel) Pitman, a surgeon who tended the wounded Monmouth rebels and was sentenced to death by Judge Jeffreys, but his sentence was commuted to penal transportation to Barbados where he escaped and was captured by pirates. Unlike the fictional Blood, Pitman did not join them, and eventually made his way back to England where he wrote a popular account of his adventures. For Blood's life as a buccaneer, Sabatini used several models, including Henry Morgan and the work of Alexandre Exquemelin, for historical details. Sabatini first introduced the character Captain Blood in a series of eight short stories in "Premier Magazine"