"Before we wrote the screenplay, we tried to get the studios interested in the story. It was turned down everywhere. But again, after the screenplay was done, there was quite a bit of studio interest. We finally went with 20th Century Fox. Then they started having trouble finding a director. Either the ones they wanted weren't available, or wanted to go in such a different direction with the story that they were unacceptable. Finally, Richard Loncrane was hired. The first draft of my screenplay took ten months, which is a very long time. When I started working with Richard, I would fly to London or he would fly here. He had a wonderful, very exciting vision of the film, but at the same time, it might have exceeded what was possible. What you see on the screen today is maybe 75 script pages. The script Loncrane and I started shooting with in Iceland was 140 pages long."