Following the critical and commercial success of his 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and earned Zinnemann the Best Director Oscar, the filmmaker announced plans to create a film version of André Malraux's Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine), a 1933 novel about the failed 1927 Communist revolution that took place in Shanghai, China, and the existential quandaries facing a group of people whose lives were changed by the event.
[3] The screenplay for the film adaptation was created by the Chinese-born novelist Han Suyin, best known for her 1952 book A Many-Splendoured Thing.
Zinnemann scouted out locations in Malaysia and Singapore, with interior scenes to be shot at the MGM studios in London, where sets and costumes were created.
[7]) Zinnemann would later state that his cast and crew continued working without salaries in the period between the news of the cancellation being made public and the scheduled start of filming on November 24, 1969.
In 2001, U.S. filmmaker Michael Cimino announced he would write and direct a film version of Man's Fate,[8] with Daniel Day-Lewis, John Malkovich, Uma Thurman and Johnny Depp in the lead roles.