The Godfather Almost Never Happened

You probably think of The Godfather as one of those films that was always going to be great. A classic waiting to happen. The truth is a little more complicated and a lot more interesting.

It started with a man who owed money.

In the late 1960s, author Mario Puzo was about $20,000 in debt from gambling. He had already written two novels that critics admired and readers mostly ignored. This time, he was not chasing awards. He needed a book people would actually buy.

What is remarkable is that Puzo had never once met a real-life mobster. The whole world of the Corleone family came entirely from research and imagination. It worked. The Godfather spent 67 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold more than 9 million copies in its first two years alone.

Paramount Pictures was so eager to get the story on screen that they purchased the film rights before Puzo had even finished writing the book. The price? Just $12,500. For what would become one of the most celebrated films in Hollywood history, that is almost too funny to believe.

The road to the finished film had a few bumps along the way. Burt Lancaster wanted the role of Don Vito Corleone so badly that he reportedly offered Paramount $1 million out of his own pocket just to buy the rights himself. The studio turned him down, and the part went to Marlon Brando instead.

There was also a plan, at one point, to pull the story completely out of the 1940s and 1950s, move the whole thing to the 1970s, and relocate it out of New York entirely. The studio was looking to cut costs. Thankfully, that idea was dropped.