A bushfire threatened the property. A feline virus killed fourteen lions and tigers. Financiers who had initially backed the project withdrew as the costs mounted and the production date receded further and further from the original timeline. Marshall funded the continuing production by selling property, by using money from his Exorcist earnings, by leveraging the family’s assets to a degree that eventually left them, in Hedren’s account, having sold four houses to cover the debts.
By the time filming effectively concluded — principal photography reportedly ended in October 1979, though additional shots were filmed in Kenya — the production had cost approximately seventeen million dollars and had consumed a decade of the family’s life.
## The Released Film and Its First Failure
Roar was released in Australia on October 30, 1981, at the Sydney Film Festival. It was subsequently released in selected international markets, including West Germany and Japan, which proved to be its strongest commercial territories. The film was not released theatrically in North America at the time of its initial distribution. Filmways Pictures handled limited North American distribution, but the film did not receive a wide commercial release.
The film that emerged from eleven years of production and seventeen million dollars in costs is approximately ninety minutes long. It follows the plot that Marshall had conceived in the early 1970s: Hank, a wildlife conservationist, lives on an African-style preserve with an enormous community of lions, tigers, leopards, and other large cats. His family — wife, daughter, two sons — arrives for a visit. The animals have not been properly introduced to the family, and the visit becomes an extended series of dangerous encounters as the humans try to survive the animals and eventually achieve a kind of coexistence.