Aldrich later reflected, "When you've had a big, big success, people who should know better lose their perspective about your infallibility. Right away it's "Let's make another one!" Let's go back and buy the first novel of some guy who, ten novels later, wrote a hit. That's ludicrous. You may have better projects, but you can't sell the better projects, you really can't." Aldrich said the only other "Dirty Dozen" he had in his drawer was "Too Late the Hero". MGM wanted to make it but "they wanted a budget of nine million seven to make it, which was too high." He ended up selling "The Legend of Lylah Clare" to MGM and setting up "Hero" at ABC where it was made for $6 million.