The Great Escape (book) a live drama adaptation as an episode of "The Philco Television Playhouse", starring E.G. Marshall, Everett Sloane, Horace Braham, and Kurt Katch. The live broadcast was praised for engineering an ingenious set design for the live broadcast, including creating the illusion of underground tunnels. In 1963, the Mirisch brothers worked with United Artists to adapt the book to produce the film "The Great Escape" starring Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough. The film itself was also an inspiration for the film "Chicken Run". In 1986, Ocean Software released the first "Great Escape" video game for the Commodore 64, ZX
The Rockford Files with Universal regarding the profits from "Rockford Files" that lasted over a decade. The dispute caused significant ill will between Garner and the studio. The dispute was settled out of court in Garner's favor, but the conflict meant that the Rockford character would not re-emerge until 1994. Universal began syndicating the show in 1979 and aggressively marketed it to local stations well into the early and middle 1980s. This accounts for its near-ubiquity on afternoon and late-night schedules in those days. From those showings, "Rockford" developed a following with younger viewers, with the momentum continuing throughout the 1990s and 2000s