Tai-Pan

Producer Martin Ransohoff and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio in 1966 acquired the rights to James Clavell's source "Tai-Pan" novel for US $500,000. The movie was then announced by MGM in 1967-68 to star Patrick McGoohan to play Dirk Struan, to be directed by Michael Anderson, with source novelist Clavell writing the screenplay. The picture was originally budgeted to cost US $26 million which was then reduced to US $20 million. The project sat around stagnant for a time in development hell. However, after severe operating losses, the epic was one of a number of expensive projects the new management at the MGM studio dropped as being too costly. The project and the development of the movie at MGM was in the end canceled by executive James T. Aubrey.

In a scene, set in 1841, several of the ladies were wearing bright mauve outfits. That would have been most unlikely for the wives of middle class traders at that time as the color purple was prohibitively expensive before the invention of analine dyes in London - in 1856. By 1870 these gaudy colors had become so cheap and commonplace that it became a status symbol to mimic the subtler, paler colors of the pre analine dye days.

Featured in Siskel & Ebert: 52 Pick-Up/Nobody's Fool/Tai Pan/The Sacrifice (1986)