Because he admired his screenplay for the Harper Lee novel "To Kill a Mockingbird", Preminger hired Horton Foote to adapt the Gilden book, which the author thought was "embarrassing," with "no genuine Southern flavor at all." His first instinct was to decline the offer, but he then decided he could do something with it, so Preminger installed him and his family in a house in London, where the director was filming "Bunny Lake Is Missing". Foote completed his draft in three months, but Preminger was unhappy with it, feeling it was missing the melodrama and theatricality the story required. He paid Foote his full fee and dismissed him, although he later insisted on giving the writer screen credit, which Foote accepted. (In later years he admitted he never saw the film and never included it on his résumé.) Preminger replaced Foote with Thomas C. Ryan, who worked for him as his chief reader and was familiar with the type of material his employer found appealing.