 Several other people who worked on "The French Connection" were also involved in this film, such as Scheider, screenwriter and police technical advisor Sonny Grosso, composer Don Ellis, and stunt coordinator Bill Hickman.20th Century Fox was again the distributor.Buddy Manucci, played by Scheider, is a loose remake of the character of Buddy "Cloudy" Russo he played in "The French Connection", a character who also used dirty tactics to capture his enemies, and who was also based on Sonny Grosso.