Editing David Lean (section)

====''Nostromo''====
During the last years of his life, Lean was in pre-production of a film version of [[Joseph Conrad]]'s ''[[Nostromo]]''. He assembled an all-star cast, including [[Marlon Brando]], [[Paul Scofield]], [[Anthony Quinn]], [[Peter O'Toole]], [[Christopher Lambert]], [[Isabella Rossellini]] and [[Dennis Quaid]], with [[Georges Corraface]] as the title character. Lean also wanted [[Alec Guinness]] to play Dr. Monygham, but the aged actor turned him down in a letter from 1989: "I believe I would be disastrous casting. The only thing in the part I might have done well is the crippled crab-like walk." As with ''Empire of the Sun'', Steven Spielberg came on board as producer with the backing of Warner Bros., but after several rewrites and disagreements on the script, he left the project and was replaced by [[Serge Silberman]], a respected producer at Greenwich Film Productions.

The ''Nostromo'' project involved several writers, including [[Christopher Hampton]] and [[Robert Bolt]], but their work was abandoned. In the end, Lean decided to write the film himself with the assistance of Maggie Unsworth (wife of cinematographer [[Geoffrey Unsworth]]), with whom he had worked on the scripts for ''Brief Encounter'', ''Great Expectations'', ''Oliver Twist'', and ''The Passionate Friends''. Originally Lean considered filming in [[Mexico]] but later decided to film in London and [[Madrid]], partly to secure O'Toole, who had insisted he would take part only if the film was shot close to home. ''Nostromo'' had a total budget of $46 million and was six weeks away from filming at the time of Lean's death from [[Head and neck cancer|throat cancer]]. It was rumoured that fellow film director [[John Boorman]] would take over direction, but the production collapsed. ''Nostromo'' was finally adapted for the small screen with an unrelated [[BBC television]] [[Nostromo (TV serial)|mini-series]] in 1997.