Movies - TV
Why Gone With The Wind’s Producer Rejected The Film At First Glance
By BEN PEARSON
According to Time, when producer David O. Selznick first read the synopsis of Margaret Mitchell’s book, “Gone With The Wind,” he passed on the project.
Being a Civil War story, Selznick thought it was too similar to a movie he had recently made, 1935's "So Red the Rose," which was a financial disappointment.
There are plenty of surface-level similarities between the two films, from costumes to the character archetypes to the locales.
Selznick's primary investor, John Hay Whitney, was able to convince him to change his mind and option the rights to the novel anyway. The rest, as they say, is history.