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At the time, Patrick Macnee said the shooting script was much better than half the scripts he had to perform from the run of the television series. (That being said, the shooting script differs radically from what ended up on-screen.)
Ralph Fiennes said of this movie, "I think it's a badge of honor to have a real flop on your resumé."
Speaking at the 2006 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony, Eddie Izzard said that he took a role in this movie in order to meet Sir Sean Connery.
Peter Bart's book "The Gross" covered this movie's unfolding disaster in great detail. Amongst other facts: Warner Brothers greenlit this movie largely on the strength of a star-packed cast and their appreciation of Jeremiah Chechik's work on Diabolique (1996), and were horrified when seeing what the first cut was like. The first screening took place in front of a "largely Spanish-speaking, working class" audience in Phoenix, Arizona, who hated the movie. The studio then forced Chechik to cut many of his favorite scenes, and conduct re-shoots, and the final cut went from 115 minutes to 89 minutes, and was completely incoherent. The studio even refused to hold further test screenings, or to have an official premiere before the August 1998 release.