Russell later said his agent told him directors who had turned down the project included Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Sydney Pollack, Robert Wise, and Orson Welles. He says his agent told him he was the twenty-seventh choice. Filming was then set to begin in March 1979 for Columbia with Howard Gottfried as producer. The film would eventually be done for Warner Bros, in part because the cost rose from an original budgeted $9 million to $12.5 million. It would eventually come in at just under $15 million with $4 million of that going on special effects.