The second proposal interested him much more. Producer Alan J. Pakula had purchased the film rights to Elliott Arnold's action novel, "Flight from Ashiya", and approached Hecht to co-produce it. Hecht and Lancaster had previously purchased the screen rights to one of Arnold's Western books, "Blood Brother", and came very close to turning it into a picture (it was eventually made as "Broken Arrow" with James Stewart). Pakula commissioned Arnold to adapt "Flight from Ashiya" into a screenplay while Hecht approached such stars as Clark Gable, Ronald Reagan and Tuesday Weld for the leads. But that summer Hecht became involved with other film projects that soon took on priority and it would be four years before "Flight from Ashiya" was filmed, with a different script and an all-new cast including Yul Brynner.