The Battle Over Citizen Kane Mercury Theatre (such as an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", which featured an all-black cast and was set in the jungle), and the infamy of his October 30, 1938, radio broadcast of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds", which sent residents of Grover's Mill, New Jersey into a panic, Orson Welles was able to negotiate a virtually unheard-of two-picture deal with RKO Pictures, the smallest of the 'big five' major studios in this era. The deal gave him creative control under a budget limit. "The Battle Over Citizen Kane" also details the lives of Orson Welles and William
Orson Welles In the summer of 1946, Welles moved to New York to direct the Broadway musical "Around the World", a stage adaptation of the Jules Verne novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" with a book by Welles and music by Cole Porter. Producer Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful 1956 film adaptation, pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, leaving Welles to support the finances. When Welles ran out of money he convinced Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to send enough money to continue the show, and in exchange Welles promised to write, produce, direct and star