Raise the Titanic (film)
Screenplay
### Screenplay

The screenplay also underwent numerous rewrites. The first writer to work on it was Adam Kennedy, who wrote the script for Stanley Kramer's film for Lew Grade, *The Domino Principle*. He was followed by Eric Hughes, [Millard Kaufman](/wiki/Millard_Kaufman "Millard Kaufman") and [Arnold Schulman](/wiki/Arnold_Schulman "Arnold Schulman"). Kennedy was brought back to do further revisions on the script and he gets sole credit.

Novelist [Larry McMurtry](/wiki/Larry_McMurtry "Larry McMurtry") – who disliked Cussler's novel, considering it "less a novel than a manual on how to raise a very large boat from deep beneath the sea" – claims that he was one of approximately 17 writers who worked on the screenplay and the only one not to petition for a credit on the finished film.

Admiral David Cooney, Chief of Information for the Navy, demanded the script be rewritten so as the Russians did not come off smarter than the Americans.

Cussler was furious with the final result, because most of the original plot had been rejected leaving a hollow shell of his story; additionally he felt that the casting was wrong. Elements of the novel which did survive into the film were the discovery of the cornet that leads the search party to the wreck, and the eventual discovery of the mineral not in the *Titanic* cargo hold, but in the Southby graveyard, although in the novel's story it is exhumed and the Sicilian Project is tested.


What elements of the novel survived into the film?