 The film was financed by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment, who had previously made "The Eagle Has Landed".That was produced by the team of David Niven Jr and Jack Wiener, and had been successful, so ITC agreed to finance two more films from the same team, "Escape to Athena" and "Green Ice".Grade gave the job of directing to George Costmatos who had just made "The Cassandra Crossing" for ITC and who Grade felt "would make a great action movie and as "action" was in vogue again I was confident we were on to a winner."