Trivia / Fail Safe

• All-Star Cast:
  • The 1964 version has Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Dan O'Herlihy, Fritz Weaver, Larry Hagman... and Dom De Luise.
  • The 2000 television version has an even bigger one, with George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Hank Azaria, Don Cheadle, Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Dennehy, Noah Wyle, and Sam Elliott. Walter Cronkite is the host.
• Dueling Movies: With Dr. Strangelove, which followed the same premise from a more satirical perspective. Dr. Strangelove achieved iconic status while Fail Safe, despite being good, performed poorly at the box office. Dr. Strangelove was released nine months prior to Fail Safe, which may have contributed to the latter's (ironic, given its title) failure. Once you've seen the over-the-top lunacy of Stanley Kubrick's film, a more straightforward telling of essentially the same story is hard to get excited about. Indeed, Kubrick actually engaged in a preemptive lawsuit to hold up the release of Fail-Safe and received an out-of-court settlement; he knew it had no legal basis, but he wanted to give his own film the benefit of first release. Both films were distributed by Columbia Pictures after it bought rights to Fail Safe, which had been an independently financed production, as part of the settlement.

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