After his experience working with Marlon Brando on Mutiny on the Bounty, Trevor Howard didn't think twice about turning down the next big-star epic offered him, Cleopatra (1963). When Peter Finch had to withdraw from that film because of delays caused by Elizabeth Taylor's illness, the role of Julius Caesar was offered to Howard before going to Rex Harrison.

Eventually, Marlon Brando wrote a long letter apologizing to Howard for his behavior during filming. The two worked together again on the spy thriller Morituri (1965), and Howard testified on Brando's behalf when he won a lawsuit against a British tabloid that had reported his obnoxious behavior on Mutiny on the Bounty.

It took ten years for Brando to recover his position as a major box-office star. The film that finally put him back on top was The Godfather (1972), and executives were so reluctant to trust him with the role of Don Vito Corleone, he had to screen-test for it.

In the '70s, director David Lean and writer Robert Bolt devoted several years to working on a version of the story that never made it to the screen. Conceived on an epic scale, the story was to have been told in two parts, released in successive years. The projected expense was so high Warner Bros. withdrew from the project.

In 1984, Orion released the Dino De Laurentiis production The Bounty, starring Mel Gibson as Christian and Anthony Hopkins (who had been considered for Lean's version) as Bligh. The film was not technically a remake, as it was based on Richard Hough's book Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian. Bolt wrote the screenplay. Although hailed as the most historically accurate depiction of the mutiny, the film did not perform well at the U.S. box office.

MGM (and later the Turner Entertainment Company after it purchased the MGM library) continued to use the Bounty for publicity purposes, first at the 1964 New York World's Fair and for decades after that as a floating museum in St. Petersburg, FL. In 1990, it appeared in the TNT telemovie adaptation of Treasure Island, starring Charlton Heston as Long John Silver. In 2007, it re-created the original ship's voyage to Tahiti.

by Frank Miller