Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles. The condition stemmed from the studio's opinion that much of the success of Kubrick's previous film "Lolita" (1962) was based on Sellers's performance in which his single character assumes a number of identities. Sellers had also played three roles in "The Mouse That Roared" (1959). Kubrick accepted the demand, later explaining that "such crass and grotesque stipulations are the "sine qua non" of the motion-picture business".