Once it became known that the film version of
Breaker Morant was near release, the Australian publishing house
Angus & Robertson re-issued an out-of-print,
remaindered and not widely known 1973 novel,
The Breaker, that had been written by
Kit Denton. It was issued with great gusto, with the original 1973 front cover,
plus the factually incorrect announcement on the cover: "
Soon to be a major film". This announcement was incorrect for two reasons: • it was Ross's play, not Denton's book, that was being made into a movie, and • Denton's book was never used to create any part of the film script (a script for which Ross had been one of the writing team from start to finish). In 1980, Ross took legal action against
Angus & Robertson in the
Supreme Court of South Australia for re-issuing the 1973 book with the factually incorrect announcement on the cover. With the support of crucial evidence provided by the film's director
Bruce Beresford, Ross won his case. Angus & Robertson withdrew the 1979 version of Denton's book from sale, and trashed all the remaining copies. Another, "revised" version of Denton's book (minus the cover announcement, and with a picture of actor
Edward Woodward on the cover) was issued by Angus & Robertson in 1980, which sold considerably more copies than his earlier, 1973 version. Ross's emphatic legal victory did not receive a lot of publicity at the time; and many people today still labour under the misapprehension that it was Kit Denton's 1973 book that was the source for the movie.
Denton's 1984 account In a 1984 interview conducted by Barry Renfrew, the Sydney bureau chief for
Associated Press, Denton directly addressed the issue of whether the screenplay of Beresford's movie had been based, in any way, upon his earlier work. The British-born Denton was most emphatic that in the process of his research in England for the project that eventually culminated in the publication of his novel,
The Breaker, in 1973, he had met so much resistance from War Office officials to all of his attempts to identify, isolate, and view the pertinent official records that were associated with Morant, the charges laid against him, his trial, and his execution, that "after weeks of futile waiting, he [Denton] decided British officials were concealing the facts and he began to accept Australian claims that Morant had been sacrificed as a colonial subject". In despair, Denton returned to Australia, and began to work on a screenplay about Morant. No-one displayed any interest of any kind in developing Denton's proposed screenplay. However, the Sydney publisher,
Angus & Robertson, suggested that some of his artistic effort might be rescued if he was able to re-work his screenplay into a novel. Denton substantially re-worked his screenplay into the book that was published in 1973. In the 1984 interview, Denton was most emphatic that (a) he himself, (b) his earlier draft screenplay, and (c) his later novel "[were] not involved with the film [of Beresford in any way]". ==Later work==