Hecht's next project was originally planned for Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions in the late 1950s, after they bought the property from Robert Aldrich. But in early 1960 it was announced that Hecht was taking over the production of "Taras Bulba", an action-adventure film that incorporated elements of war and romance. Based on Nikolai Gogol's novella of the same name, "Taras Bulba" tells the story of a Cossack clan in Ukraine fighting against the Poles, all while a love story develops between the son of the Cossack leader and the daughter of an aristocratic Polish family. The film was a co-production between Tony Curtis' Curtleigh Productions and Hecht's original Harold Hecht Productions, making a comeback after its first use for 1948's "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands". Hecht hired J. Lee Thompson as director and Waldo Salt, who had written the script of "The Flame and the Arrow" in 1949 before being blacklisted, and Karl Tunberg, a two-time Oscar nominee who had just worked on megahit "Ben-Hur", to write the screenplay.