This was a personal project for Steve McQueen, as he made it to prove to many people that he could act. But Warner Bros. could not figure out how to distribute the film and decided not to release it domestically. It had a very brief theatrical release in New York a few years after McQueen's death.
Steve McQueen's first movie role since his "retirement" after The Towering Inferno (1974) in which he was one of the world's biggest box office draws, thereafter rejecting offer after offer (including Apocalypse Now (1979), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Sorcerer (1977)). Instead, he chose to do what he described as a "wonderful play" with a "great actor's part".
Steve McQueen wanted his wife Ali MacGraw to star opposite him, until they separated just before production began.