Charles Laughton had a great deal of difficulty getting into the role, and Director Josef von Sternberg was not very sympathetic or helpful. When co-star Merle Oberon was injured in a car crash during filming, producer Alexander Korda used it as an excuse to abandon his already troubled production, which was nowhere near completion. All the filmed footage survives.
Director Thorold Dickinson planned to utilize footage from this movie in "The Denham Studio Mystery", a proposed sequel to his movie The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939). The movie was never made, however.
In this unfinished film, Charles Laughton played the Roman Emperor Claudius I. In The Sign of the Cross (1932), he played Nero, Claudius's great-nephew, adopted son and successor.
Producer Alexander Korda read the book "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves, which had been published in 1934, and decided that it would make a good movie. He assembled its formidable cast and had his art director brother Vincent Korda design elaborate sets, but then decided not to direct it himself because he didn't care to work again day-to-day with Charles Laughton, with whom he'd already worked several times. Korda signed noted Hollywood director Josef Von Sternberg, but there proved to be little rapport between him and star Charles Laughton, who often showed up late on-set and flubbed his lines. He said that he couldn't get into character and asked to try another scene in the hope of finding Claudius's essence. One morning Laughton burst into the studio announcing that, after listening to recordings of Edward VIII's abdication speech, he finally understood the character (it was, ironically, the new King George VI who had a stutter like Claudius's). About a month after filming started, Merle Oberon was being driven in London when her car was in a collision and she was thrown through the windshield, requiring stitches to her face and causing her to suffer blackouts. Korda, unsatisfied with the quality of the footage being delivered by von Sternberg, used Oberon's accident, whose severity was overstated, as an excuse to abandon the production.
Director Josef von Sternberg claimed that Sir Ralph Richardson was in the cast, but Richardson later denied it.