As early as the filming of "Rain Man" in 1969, George Lucas, then Francis Ford Coppola's assistant, encouraged John Millius to write a Vietnam War movie, and the latter thought of adapting Joseph Condela The novel "Heart of Darkness", but he has no intention of directing, but wants Lucas to play the lead. However, director Larol Barrland once said that he had the idea of filming "Apocalypse Now" in 1967. At that time, Milius hadn't started writing and he reached an agreement with producer Joel Langdon, but The two ultimately failed to get the right to adapt Kondela's novel.
Coppola paid Milius $15,000 to write the script. The first draft of Milius's screenplay was completed in 1969, and the original title was "Psychedelic Warrior". Although the script of the film is adapted from "Heart of Darkness", it is obviously quite different from the original. Kondela incorporated his personal experience in Africa in "Heart of Darkness", when he was the captain of a steamship. Milius hopes to treat Condra's novel as a kind of fable, because the plot of the novel is too simple to comply with. When conceiving the characters, he also borrowed the first-hand materials around him.
