Trailer
Plot summary
Colonel Allen Faulkner, a former British Army officer working as a mercenary, meets the banker Sir Edward Matherson in London. Matherson wants President Julius Limbani, the ousted ruler of a southern African country, brought out of Zembala, where he is held in a remote prison by General Ndofa's troops and is due to be executed. Faulkner takes the contract and recruits from his old circle: Captain Rafer Janders, a tactician and single father; Shawn Fynn, a former Guards lieutenant who flies and smuggles; Sandy Young, who drills the fifty-man force in Swaziland; and Pieter Coetzee, who means to buy a farm with his pay. Faulkner gives Janders his word that he will look after his son Emile.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Wild Geese (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Insurers only agreed to Richard Harris's casting if producer Lloyd put up his entire salary as guarantee and Harris put up half of his $600,000 fee, and if the producer signed a declaration at the end of every day saying Harris had not held up filming due to drinking, misbehaving or rewriting lines.
- Roger Moore's character was nearly offered to O. J. Simpson after confusion on the American financier's part regarding the character being described as black Irish.
- The film's villain General Ndofa, an extremely corrupt and brutal leader of a copper-rich nation in central Africa, was a thinly disguised version of President Mobutu Sese Seko. The deposed leader Julius Limbani (Winston Ntshona) was based on Moïse Tshombe, and the hero Colonel Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton) on Colonel Michael “Mad Mike” Hoare.
- The decision to film in South Africa during apartheid made the production controversial. Anti-apartheid campaigners protested at the London premiere, where producer Lloyd brought newspaper articles describing the film's enthusiastic reception in the black township of Soweto, and in Ireland the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement protested outside cinemas showing it.
- Burt Lancaster hoped to play Rafer Janders but wanted the part substantially altered and enlarged. The producers declined and chose Richard Harris instead, despite Harris being blamed for Golden Rendezvous going over budget by $1.5 million through his drinking and rewriting the script.
- The novel and the film grew out of rumors following the 1968 landing of a mysterious airplane in Rhodesia, said to have been loaded with mercenaries and an African president believed to have been a dying Moïse Tshombe.
- Northern Irish actor Stephen Boyd was originally set to star as Sandy Young, the sergeant major who trains the mercenaries before their mission, but he died shortly before filming commenced and Jack Watson was chosen as a late replacement.
- Palitoy based the Action Man figure Tom Stone on the film's character Blake, after looking at the pre-production photos and posters, and subsequently made some modifications to the figure.
