failure of Casino Royale, and that the studio had bought the rights to the novel without realising that it was "not James Bond". The project was eventually revived under director Frank R. Pierson, who jettisoned Richler's screenplay and made the film from his own adapted script, although that proved to be a critical and commercial flop. Zaharoff, Pedlar of Death (1969) was one of Clayton's most cherished projects, a biopic about the notorious early 20th century arms dealer and political manipulator Basil Zaharoff. It was originally slated to be made for Universal, and Clayton reportedly did extensive research for it, but it was never given approval. He tried to revive the project twice more, in 1978 and 1990, but was never able to get it made. The Tenant (1969–75) – Clayton was originally attached to make a film adaptation of Roland Topor's psychological horror novel for Universal around 1970, but this project never made it into production. He revived it while working for Paramount in the early 1970s, intending to make it after The Great Gatsby, but to Clayton's great chagrin studio head Barry Diller wrongly assumed Clayton had lost interest in the film and gave it to Roman Polanski, without consulting Clayton. When he discovered this, Clayton phoned Diller and excoriated him for taking away a project that had been acquired specifically for him, and giving it to another director without his knowledge. Another complicating factor in Clayton's career was that several film projects were cancelled without warning when pre-production was well advanced – in one case, just two weeks before shooting was to have started. Neil Sinyard nominates three major projects, Casualties of War, Fall Creek, and Silence, the successive failures of which reportedly devastated Clayton, and Clayton himself later opined that these setbacks contributed to his subsequent health problems: Casualties of War (Paramount, 1970) was a controversial Vietnam War drama, based on a true story by Daniel Lang, published in The New Yorker in 1969. The story concerns four American soldiers who are charged with the rape and murder of a young Vietnamese woman after one of their comrades (who had refused to take part in the crime) informs on them. An early script by Peter Hammill was rejected, and many leading writers were considered for the project, before novice screenwriter David Giler submitted a first-draft script that Clayton deemed "magnificent". According to Neil Sinyard, Paramount cancelled