Asimov about a meteor hitting a major city in the United States. Parvin hired Edmund H. North to write the screenplay, who took further inspiration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Project Icarus. However, Ronald Neame and Sean Connery disliked both North's script and a rewrite by Steven Bach, and so hired Stanley Mann to completely re-write the screenplay. This led to a Writers Guild of America dispute over whether North should be credited as a co-writer. During the writing of the North's first draft, Parvin secured financing and investment from the Shaw Brothers Studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, Nippon Herald Films, and American International Pictures. The film was an American International Pictures co-production with the Shaw Brothers Studio in British Hong Kong. $2.7 million of the budget came from AIP. Neame cast Natalie Wood as Tatiana because she was the daughter of Russian immigrants, and she worked with George Rubinstein to perfect a Leningrad accent. Alec Guinness, Yul Brynner, Rod Steiger, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov, Eli Wallach, Telly Savalas, Theodore Bikel, Richard Burton, and Orson Welles were each considered for the role of Dr. Dubov. Donald Pleasence was cast for the role, and filmed a few scenes as the character. However, he departed the production in order to work on the film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He was replaced by Brian Keith, who had been cast as General Adlon and was replaced in that role by Martin Landau. Principal photography took place from October 31, 1977, to January 27, 1978, mainly at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, with some location filming in Washington, D.C., St. Moritz, Switzerland and Hong Kong. The release date was scheduled for June 15, 1979, but it was pushed back to October 19 due to special effects reshoots after special effects director Frank Van der Veer was fired. Special effects With most of the special effects budget already expended by Van de Veer (whose work was not usable, and subsequently discarded), William Cruise and Margot Anderson were hired to reshoot all of the special effects for what money remained. They were also fired, and replaced by Paul Kassler and Rob Balack, who were asked to complete the special effects, again, with what money remained in the budget (and just two months before the film's release). In order to complete the film on time, Kassler and Balack re-used footage from the 1978 disaster film