Died During Production: John D. MacDonald died in December 1986 (at the age of seventy, having fallen into a coma after complications of coronary artery bypass surgery earlier that month), leaving the major revelation at the end of The Lonely Silver Rain (1985), the 21st book in the series, to frustrate his fans. Rumours of a manuscript (Black Border for McGee), intended to be published after his death as a conclusion to the series, were denied by his publisher and his widow.
Stillborn Franchise: The film adaptations. Darker Than Amber was released in 1970, with Rod Taylor as Travis, and an adaptation of The Empty Copper Sea was released under the title Travis McGee in 1983, with Sam Elliott in the lead role. Neither were successes, so no direct continuations were ever made.
What Could Have Been: An adaptation of The Deep Blue Good-by was announced in 2009 at 20th Century Fox, initially to be directed by Oliver Stone and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It went through multiple changes, including a title change to Travis McGee, and by April 2015, the latest incarnation (directed by James Mangold and starring Christian Bale as McGee, who had to withdraw after a knee injury, along with Peter Dinklage as Meyer) had been canceled.
Miscellaneous trivia:
According to Stephen King's nonfiction work Danse Macabre, series author MacDonald named the eighteenth book in the series after a Mondegreen:
John D. MacDonald tells the story of how for weeks his son was terrified of something he called "the green ripper." MacDonald and his wife finally figured it out — at a dinner party, a friend had mentioned the Grim Reaper. What their son had heard was green ripper, and later it became the title of one of MacDonald's Travis McGee stories.
