page_title: Cleopatra (1963 film)
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Cleopatra (1963 film) / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Costume worn by Richard Burton in the film Cleopatra (1963) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz displayed in Cinecittà studios, Rome, Italy. (source)
context_page_description: Cleopatra is a 1963 American epic historical drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with a screenplay adapted by Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall and Sidney Buchman from the 1957 book The Life and Times of Cleopatra by Carlo Maria Franzero, and from histories by Plutarch, Suetonius, and Appian. It stars Elizabeth Taylor in the eponymous role. Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, and Martin Landau are featured in supporting roles. It chronicles the struggles of Cleopatra, the young Queen of Egypt, to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome.
  The film achieved notoriety during its production for its massive cost overruns and production troubles, which included changes in director and cast, a change of filming locale, sets that had to be constructed twice, lack of a firm shooting script, and personal scandal around co-stars Taylor and Burton. It was the most expensive film ever made up to that point and almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox.
  Cleopatra was the highest-grossing film of 1963, earning box-office of $57.7 million in the United States and Canada, and one of the highest-grossing films of the decade at a worldwide level.
context_section_description: The story of Cleopatra had proved a hit in 1917 for silent-screen legend Theda Bara. Paramount's 1934 production, using different source material and starring Claudette Colbert, was a huge success. In 1958, 20th Century Fox executives hired veteran Hollywood producer Walter Wanger to shepherd another film about Cleopatra into production. Although the studio originally sought a relatively cheap production of $2 million, Wanger envisioned a much more opulent epic, and in mid-1959 successfully negotiated a higher budget of $5 million. Rouben Mamoulian was assigned to direct and Elizabeth Taylor was awarded a record-setting contract of $1 million. Filming began in England but in January 1961 Taylor became so ill that production was shut down. Sixteen weeks of production and costs of $7 million had produced just ten minutes of film. Fox was reimbursed by the insurance company and Mamoulian was fired.
  To replace Mamoulian, Elizabeth Taylor granted she would approve one of two directors she had worked with: George Stevens — A Place in the Sun — or Joseph L. Mankiewicz — Suddenly Last Summer.  Stevens was tangled up in pre-production for his epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told, so Mankiewicz was courted to take over.  By hiring Mankiewicz, the producers got two birds with one contract: Mankiewicz would direct and write the screenplay.  However, to attract Mankiewicz to a project that he was not enthusiastic about cost Twentieth Century Fox a major expense: the studio agreed to take Mankiewicz's independent production company off his hands for $3 million. The production moved to the more appropriate climes of Cinecittà, outside of Rome. Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd left the production owing to other commitments and were replaced by Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, as Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony respectively. During filming, Taylor met Burton and the two began an adulterous affair; the scandal made headlines worldwide, since both were married to others, and brought bad publicity to the already troubled production. Mankiewicz was later fired during the editing phase, only to be rehired to reshoot the opening battle scenes in Spain.
  The cut of the film which Mankiewicz screened for the studio was six hours long. This was cut to four hours for its initial premiere, but the studio demanded (over the objections of Mankiewicz) that the film be cut once more, this time to just barely over three hours to allow theaters to increase the number of showings per day. Mankiewicz unsuccessfully attempted to convince the studio to split the film in two in order to preserve the original cut. These would have been released separately, as Caesar and Cleopatra followed by Antony and Cleopatra.
  Cleopatra ended up costing $31 million, not including distribution costs making it the most expensive film ever made, at the time. It almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox. Fox shut down a number of other productions to pour money assigned to them into Cleopatra, including the Marilyn Monroe film Something's Got to Give. In his book Marilyn: A Biography, Norman Mailer puts some of the blame for Monroe's suicide on the studio's halting production on her movie. In a bid for cash, the studio sold a 180-acre backlot to developers, resulting in the creation of Century City.
caption: Costume worn by Richard Burton in the film, displayed at the Cinecittà studios in Rome, Italy
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