Never Cry Wolf (film) - Production

Production

The film's fundamental premise is that life in the Arctic seems to be about dying: not only are the caribou and the wolves dying, but the indigenous Inuit people and their way of life as well. The animals are losing their habitat and the Inuit are losing their land and their resources while their youth are being seduced by--and pressured into-- modernity. They are trading what is real and true, dicing away their time-honored traditions for the perceived comforts and securities of the modern world.

Never Cry Wolf blends the documentary film style with the narrative elements of drama, resulting in a type of docudrama. It was originally written for the screen by Sam Hamm but the screenplay was altered over time and Hamm ended up sharing credit with Curtis Hanson and Richard Kletter.

The picture is the first Walt Disney film to show naked adult buttocks (of actor Charles Martin Smith).

Smith, who had previously worked with Disney on films such as No Deposit, No Return and Herbie Goes Bananas, devoted almost three years to Never Cry Wolf. Smith wrote, "I was much more closely involved in that picture than I had been in any other film. Not only acting, but writing and the whole creative process." He also found the process difficult. "During much of the two-year shooting schedule in Canada's Yukon and in Nome, Alaska, I was the only actor present. It was the loneliest film I've ever worked on," Smith said.

L. David Mech, an internationally recognized wolf expert who has researched wolves since 1958 in places such as Minnesota, Canada, Italy, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, and on Isle Royale, criticized the work, stating that Mowat is no scientist and that in all of Mech's own studies, he had never encountered a wolf pack that regularly subsisted on small prey, as related in Mowat's book or in the film adaptation.