Wenders was a fan of Patricia Highsmith and wanted to adapt one of her novels to film, especially "The Tremor of Forgery" or "The Cry of the Owl". When he learned that the rights to these novels and Highsmith's other novels had been sold, he met with her and she offered him the unpublished manuscript of "Ripley's Game", which was published in 1974. Wenders also uses elements of "Ripley Under Ground", though he did not have the rights to do so.