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After a long and troublesome shoot on location in Tahiti, exacerbated in part by frustrated original director Carol Reed’s handing over the reins mid-stream to Lewis Milestone, and star Marlon Brando’s penchant for ad-libbing, Mutiny on the Bounty opens. Adapted from Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall's 1932 novel by Charles Lederer (with uncredited input from five other writers) the film, a remake of the successful 1935 version with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, is an expensive box-office failure despite the best efforts of co-stars Trevor Howard and Richard Harris to counter Brando’s method-centered petulance. Roger Donaldson's third version from 1984, simply titled The Bounty, features Mel Gibson as the mutinous Fletcher Christain and Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh.
