The Sting "making of" featurette, "The Art of the Sting", included interviews with cast and crew. The film was released on Blu-ray in 2012, as part of Universal's 100th anniversary releases. The Sting The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss (Robert Shaw). The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who had directed Newman and Redford in the western "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Created by screenwriter David S. Ward, the story was inspired by real-life cons perpetrated
Billing (filmmaking) the film's trailers; however, at the end of the movie, as the cast's names roll from the bottom of the screen, Newman's name is fully visible first, giving him top billing in the closing credits. This was the first time that this type of "staggered but equal" billing had been used for a movie, although the same thing had been discussed for the same two actors five years earlier when McQueen was going to play the Sundance Kid in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969). McQueen ultimately passed on the part and was replaced by Robert Redford, who did