Death on the Nile is a 1978 British mystery film based on Agatha Christie's 1937 novel of the same name, directed by John Guillermin and adapted by Anthony Shaffer.

[4] The film features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, played by Peter Ustinov for the first time, plus an all-star supporting cast that includes Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Jane Birkin, David Niven, George Kennedy, and Jack Warden.

Various famous Ancient Egyptian sights are featured in the film, such as the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, and temples at Abu Simbel and Karnak.

Expat heiress Linnet Ridgeway hires her friend Jackie de Bellefort's fiancé, Simon Doyle, as her English estate manager.

A bundle is retrieved from the Nile, containing the missing pistol wrapped in van Schuyler's stole, which has a bullet hole; a red ink-stained handkerchief; and a marble ashtray.

Poirot gathers everyone in the saloon and reveals that Simon killed Linnet, with Jackie as the mastermind; they had remained lovers all along.

After running to Linnet's cabin and shooting her, Simon returned to the saloon and shot himself in the leg, using van Schuyler's stole as a silencer.

The plan was to make Death on the Nile, but the rights could not be obtained, so in July 1975 EMI announced they would film Evil Under the Sun instead.

[10] The initial scenes set in England were filmed at the village of Hambleden, the main gates of Cliveden in Buckinghamshire and at the country house Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire.

Four weeks filming were on the steamer Karnak (the historic ship SS Memnon) and the rest at places such as Aswan, Abu Simbel, Luxor, and Cairo.

[11] Desert filming required makeup call at 4 a.m. and shooting at 6 a.m. to accommodate a two-hour delay around noon when temperatures hovered near 54 °C (130 °F).

"[12][13] John Guillermin commented that the Egyptian government was supportive of the film because there were so many Agatha Christie fans in the country, and the story "was unpolitical".

[14]"Poirot can be a cold fish, but here we made him more humanistic and warm, interested in young people for instance", said the director.

[15] Although it was a British film, Death on the Nile premiered in New York on 29 September 1978 to coincide with the sale of tickets for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's opening on 15 December 1978 of the travelling exhibition The Treasures of Tutankhamun, which had piqued interest in Egyptian artefacts.

For the U.S. market, artist Richard Amsel was commissioned to change the original British poster art by including the profile of King Tutankhamun with ceremonial knife (and modern revolver), surrounded by the cast.

[12] In London, there was a Royal Charity Premiere at the ABC Shaftesbury Avenue on 23 October 1978, attended by The Queen, Prince Philip and Earl Mountbatten.

Although it was entertaining, and followed the formula of the Murder on the Orient Express film four years earlier, he found it a bit too long and not quite as good.

He concluded that screenwriter Anthony Shaffer and director John Guillermin were not quite as suitable to handle Agatha Christie's rich material as Paul Dehn and Sidney Lumet had been when they worked on Murder on the Orient Express.