The Man Who Would Be King is a
1975 film adapted from the
Rudyard Kipling short story of the same title. It was adapted and directed by
John Huston and starred
Sean Connery,
Michael Caine,
Saeed Jaffrey, and
Christopher Plummer as Kipling (giving a name to the short story's anonymous narrator).
The film follows two rogue ex-
non-commissioned officers of the
British Raj who set off from 19th century
British India in search of adventure and end up as kings of
Kafiristan. Kipling is believed to have been inspired by the travels of
American adventurer
Josiah Harlan during the period of the
Great Game between
Imperial Russia and the
British Empire and
James Brooke, an Englishman who became the "white
Raja" of
Sarawak in
Borneo. Like much of his writing, Kipling's original story takes a nuanced, and in the end cold-edged view of
imperialism; in Huston's telling, both East and West have their faults and virtues.
Shot on location in
Morocco, Huston had planned to make the film since the 1950s, originally with
Humphrey Bogart and
Clark Gable, then
Burt Lancaster and
Kirk Douglas, and then
Robert Redford and
Paul Newman — Newman suggested British actors Connery and Caine.