Ann Turner was working for Roadshow when she was hired to adapt the novel, which she loved. However she says the project soon became compromised: When I first saw the film I thought it looked like the writer was on drugs or completely insane, because you could see there were two films working within the one film... There were a lot of different voices in terms of the finance-raising, there was American money, and the producers - many, plural - really had very different views of what the film should be. Greta Scacchi really liked the book and liked the script and fought for it. But during the process of developing the script, they brought in an American writer and it really changed. I was off directing
Police Rescue at the time. Then the cast, when they were in Thailand, said they'd signed on the script that I'd written and wanted to change it back to that. There was something about the American script that was more like
King Rat than
Turtle Beach. So then I was flown out to Thailand to rewrite the rewrite and the film ended up actually being a combination of both. Stephen Wallace finished the film and made his cut but then he was fired off the film. Extra scenes were shot: I should have taken my name off it. I got advised by my agents not to, but I should have. I don't feel the film is mine. A lot of the shots are mine, but extra stuff was shot and my name is on it, so I've got to take responsibility for it. But it's the one film I've made that I feel ashamed of... it was Matt Carroll who made it. ==Release==