Sir Patrick Stewart's friend Sir Ian McKellen credits this as one of his favorite William Shakespeare based performances on film.
The story is broadly based on William Shakespeare's play King Lear, which was itself broadly based on a legend about a British king who allegedly flourished around 800 BC. The character analogs are as follows:
- John Lear = King Lear
- Henry Westover = Earl of Gloucester
- Thomas Westover = Edgar of Gloucester
- Emmett Westover = Edmund of Gloucester
- Susannah Lear Tumlinson = Princess Goneril
- Henry Tumlinson = Duke Maglanus of Albany
- Rebecca Lear Highsmith = Princess Regan
- Mr. Highsmith = Duke Henninus of Cornwall
- Claudia Lear = Princess Cordelia
- Menchaca = King Aganippus of France
- Rip the slave = amalgam of Earl Caius of Kent and The Fool
- Warnell = Oswald.
Sir Patrick Stewart and Colm Meaney played officers of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D on Star Trek: La nueva generación (1987).
When Susannah Tumlinson plays briefly on a piano, the music is the opening line of Greensleeves, a song believed to have been composed by a contemporary of William Shakespeare.