The Black Bird was conceived when veteran producer Ray Stark, who owned the film rights to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, commissioned writer-producer David Giler to pen an offbeat continuation. Giler—after an abortive attempt to collaborate with John Milius—reimagined the property as a broad comedy and, with Stark’s blessing, took the director’s chair on his first feature. What might have been an artistic oddity became production-side friction: contemporary accounts and later histories note that during principal photography in 1974–75 frequent clashes broke out between Stark and the film’s star, George Segal. Those disputes, described in succinct form in production summaries, framed the shoot as contentious, undermining a smooth set dynamic between a controlling rights-holder/producer and a leading man attempting to carry a tonal gamble.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Producer Ray Stark and Star George Segal Locked in Repeated Clashes During the Troubled 1975 Sequel The Black Bird
The Black Bird (1975) / 1970s
The Black Bird was conceived when veteran producer Ray Stark, who owned the film rights to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, commissioned writer-producer David Giler to pen an offbeat continuation. Giler—after an abortive attempt to collaborate with John Milius—reimagined the property as a broad comedy and, with Stark’s blessing, took the director’s chair on his first feature. What might have been an artistic oddity became production-side friction: contemporary accounts and later histories note that during principal photography in 1974–75 frequent clashes broke out between Stark and the film’s star, George Segal. Those disputes, described in succinct form in production summaries, framed the shoot as contentious, undermining a smooth set dynamic between a controlling rights-holder/producer and a leading man attempting to carry a tonal gamble.
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