THE new action adventure movie “Sahara,” out Friday, features Matthew McConaughey as Dirk Pitt, a swashbuckling explorer, locked in an epic battle with a giant corporation that rides roughshod over the rights of impotent African natives.
Behind the scenes, a similarly dramatic confrontation is being played out between Clive Cussler, the eccentric explorer who wrote the Dirk Pitt books, and Hollywood production company Bristol Bay. Cussler accuses them of having taken liberties with his novel and riding roughshod over his contractual rights.
Cussler, 73, who penned 18 adventures featuring Pitt over the last 35 years, has good reason to be protective of his franchise. The last time Hollywood touched one of his books, in 1980, the result was the disastrous “Raise the Titanic.”
Audiences hated it, and producer Lord Lew Grade later quipped, “It would have been cheaper to drain the Atlantic.” “They botched ‘Raise the Titanic’ so badly that I waited 20 years to do it again,” Cussler told The Post. “This time, I demanded total script and casting approval, and it did not turn out that way.”
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Last year, Cussler filed a lawsuit against producer Crusader Entertainment (now renamed Bristol Bay productions) asking that the movie to be blocked and seeking $10 million in damages. Crusader fired back, saying that Cussler demanded to be hired as screenwriter. “When Crusader declined, Cussler became vindictive,” Crusader said in its filing.
For his part, Cussler says it is a simple matter of a broken promise: “They violated my contract, and I wasn’t going to let them get away with it,” he says. The line sounds like something Dirk Pitt might say. It’s just one of many parallels between Pitt and Cussler. Both have devoted their lives to finding shipwrecks. In the books, Pitt works for NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Agency.
Cussler is the founder of a real-life shipwreck-finding organization, also called NUMA, and has discovered about 100 shipwrecks in his career. Cussler freely admits he is an eccentric: “People have said I belong in a rubber room because I look for wrecks, and when I find them, I just do a survey. I don’t look for treasure or artifacts,” he says.
Royalties from the Dirk Pitt franchise bankroll these expeditions. “I am not like Stephen King, who writes one book, then writes another. I finish a book and go off and … look for wrecks. Then, six months later, I might start another book.”
While some find Cussler’s crankiness endearing, Bristol Bay, in its response to Cussler’s action, portrays him as unreasonable. The company said Cussler rejected one screenplay without reading it – because the screenwriter didn’t travel to Arizona to receive his comments in person, the response claimed.
Matthew McConaughey also found the writer had exacting demands. In an interview with The Post, McConaughey said, “I mean, I remember the first thing, first meeting, he goes, ‘Well, I think you’d be a great Dirk Pitt. There’s just one problem. You’re blond and Dirk’s brunette.'”
Cussler agrees the conversation did take place: “He has light hair, Dirk’s is black,” he said. “Matthew’s all right. Originally, I wanted Errol Flynn, but McConaughey should be good as Dirk Pitt. He came to my house twice and worked to get (the part). And he drove that trailer ’round the country,” says Cussler, clearly impressed at McConaughey’s dedication. Despite all his legal disagreements, Cussler ultimately wishes the film well. “I would like to see it be a success,” he says. “From what I have heard from people who have seen the previews, it’s an exciting movie. And of course, I would make money if they did three, four and five. But to me, it would have been a better movie if they had stuck to the book.”