Between 1975 and 1977, Żuławski adapted the novel into a screenplay. He shot the film at various locations, including the Baltic seashore at Lisi Jar near Rozewie, Lower Silesia, the Wieliczka Salt Mine, the Tatra Mountains, the Caucasus mountains in Georgia, the Crimea in USSR, and the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. In the fall of 1977, the project came to a sudden halt when Janusz Wilhelmi was appointed vice-minister of cultural affairs. He interpreted the film's battle between the Selenites and the Szerns as a thinly veiled allegory of the Polish people's struggle with totalitarianism. Wilhelmi shut down the film project, which was eighty percent complete, and ordered all materials destroyed.