Editing The Right Stuff (film) (section)

===Development===
In 1979, independent producers [[Robert Chartoff]] and [[Irwin Winkler]] outbid [[Universal Pictures]] for the movie rights to [[Tom Wolfe]]'s book, paying $350,000.<ref name="Ansen">Ansen, David and Katrine Ames. "A Movie with All 'The Right Stuff'." ''[[Newsweek]]'', October 3, 1983, p. 38.</ref> They hired [[William Goldman]] to write the screenplay. Goldman wrote in his memoirs that his adaptation focused on the astronauts, and he entirely ignored Chuck Yeager.<ref>Goldman 2001, p. 254.</ref> Goldman was inspired to accept the job because he wanted to say something patriotic about America in the wake of the [[Iran hostage crisis]]. Winkler writes in his memoirs that he was disappointed that Goldman's adaptation ignored Yeager.<ref name="wink">{{cite book |first=Irwin |last=Winkler |author-link=Irwin Winkler |title=A Life in Movies: Stories from Fifty Years in Hollywood |page=1717/3917 |edition=Kindle |publisher=Abrams Press |year=2019}}</ref>

In June 1980, [[United Artists]] agreed to finance the film up to $20 million, and the producers began looking for a director. [[Michael Ritchie (film director)|Michael Ritchie]] was originally attached but fell through; so did [[John Avildsen]] who, four years prior, had won an Oscar for his work under Winkler and Chartoff on the original ''[[Rocky]]''. (''The Right Stuff'' would have reunited Avildsen with both producers and also with a fourth ''Rocky'' veteran, composer [[Bill Conti]].)<ref>Goldman 2001, p 257.</ref>

Ultimately, Chartoff and Winkler approached director [[Philip Kaufman]], who agreed to make the film but did not like Goldman's script. Kaufman disliked the emphasis on patriotism and wanted Yeager put back in the film.<ref>Goldman 2001, p. 258.</ref> Eventually, Goldman quit the project in August 1980, and United Artists pulled out.

When Wolfe showed no interest in adapting his own book, Kaufman wrote a draft in eight weeks.<ref name="Ansen" /> His draft restored Yeager to the story, because "if you're tracing how the future began, the future in space travel, it began really with Yeager and the world of the test pilots. The astronauts descended from them."<ref name="Wilford">Wilford, John Noble. [https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=3&res=9C0DE5DB143BF935A25753C1A965948260&scp=73&sq=%22The+Right+Stuff%22&st=nyt "'The Right Stuff': From Space to Screen."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205722/https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/16/movies/the-right-stuff-from-space-to-the-screen.html |date=2020-11-15 }} ''[[The New York Times]]'', October 16, 1983. Retrieved: December 29, 2008.</ref>

After the financial failure of ''[[Heaven's Gate (film)|Heaven's Gate]]'', the studio put ''The Right Stuff'' in [[Turnaround (filmmaking)|turnaround]]. Then, [[The Ladd Company]] stepped in with an estimated $17 million.