According to Peter Bart, George C. Scott could be difficult during filming. He moved the bulk of filming to Hawaii because of concerns about how Scott would interact with the predominantly black population in the Bahamas.
This is the second of two collaborations between George C. Scott and Franklin J. Schaffner. The first had been Patton, generale d'acciaio (1970) seven years earlier. That film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Ernest Hemingway's novel "Islands in the Stream" was posthumously released in 1970.