The movie was filmed between 1970 and 1976, with editing continuing into the 1980s. Welles left behind nearly 100 hours of footage and a workprint consisting of assemblies and a few edited scenes.
In May of 2015, directors Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach announced that they were running a campaign to raise $2 million to complete the post production and release the film.
John Huston's son, Danny Huston, looped over some of his father's dialogue in the 2018 post-production for the film's final release by Netflix.
Three small portions of the film have been released over the years and can most prominently be seen in the Orson Welles documentary "Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (1995)."
The film was never completed due to financial problems. One of the financiers was the brother-in-law of the Iranian leader Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In 2004 Peter Bogdanovich said that there was still hope that the film would soon be finished.