Materials in AMPAS library files mention Michael Sturges and Chris Soldo as assistant directors. However Soldo is listed in onscreen credits as a production assistant and Sturges’ name does not appear onscreen at all. Although Stuart Newman is mentioned as a production assistant in Box on 19 Sep 1977, onscreen credits list him as Stuart Neumann, location manager.
       According to a Joe Eszterhas interview in materials in AMPAS library files and articles in the 5 Sep 1977 LAHExam and the 14 Apr 1978 DV, producer Gene Corman was inspired to make a movie about labor unions after reading some of Eszterhas’ magazine articles. Corman and studio United Artists commissioned Eszterhas to write a screenplay on the topic. Although he had never written a screenplay before, Eszterhas interviewed workers in the Midwest about their union experiences and submitted a forty-page outline to UA in the fall of 1975. Director Norman Jewison joined the project later that year. Eszterhas turned that forty-page essay into a 500-page screenplay. He and Jewison edited it down to 240 pages in 1976 and, when Sylvester Stallone was hired, the actor helped edit the script down to 150 pages. In a 7 May 1977 NYT news item, Jewison clarified that Stallone contributed to the writing of his character, “Johnny Kovak,” and to his dialogue with Melinda Dillon. The director denied that the main character was based on Jimmy Hoffa, the missing leader of the Teamsters union, though several publications drew that parallel, including the 24 Jun 1978 Saturday Review.
       In production materials in AMPAS library files, Eszterhas said he wished the movie could have starred Jack Nicholson, the actor he had originally envisioned as “Johnny Kovak.” Also, Jewison considered three endings for the film, each of which differed from Eszterhas’ original ending, which had “Kovak” returning to the warehouse that was his original place of employment, only to be gunned down in an ambush by “Babe Milano’s” men.
       In the NYT article, Jewison explained that, after he received Eszterhas’ forty-page treatment, United Artists’s chairman of the board Arthur Krim offered Jewison a budget of $4 million to make the film, but only if Jewison could raise another $4 million himself. When Jewison tried and failed to find a studio to co-produce the film, he convinced Krim to give him the full budget amount. Months later, in an 18 Jul 1977 DV article noting that F.I.S.T. was one of the first films to be affected by United Artists’s mandate to reduce cost overruns, Jewison protested being denied his customary 10% overrun contingency. He accepted the limitation because United Artists was the only studio that agreed to make the movie. Despite the studio’s attempt to restrict production costs, the movie would cost “about $100,000 to $125,000 over” its $8.1 million budget, Jewison reported in HR on 10 Aug 1977.
       An early announcement in Var on 1 Dec 1976 reported that United Artists expected F.I.S.T. to begin shooting Apr 1977, but most sources, including Box on 21 Mar 1977 and again on 2 May 1977, agreed that principal photography started 9 May 1977 in Dubuque, IA. Box further reported that the production would finish shooting in IA on 2 July 1977, then move to southern California for nine weeks to shoot on a soundstage and on location before filming the movie’s final scenes Sep 1977 in Washington, D.C. In a 27 May 1977 HR news item, Corman confirmed that F.I.S.T. was scheduled to shoot for eighteen weeks and was expected to open in 1978 around Easter time.
       According to LAHExam, production materials in AMPAS library files and the 20 Sep 1977 HR, F.I.S.T.’s production in California included working on a soundstage at Culver City Studios and locations in the cities of Colton, Wilmington, San Pedro, Sun Valley and South Pasadena as well as at venues such as the Hollywood Palladium, the Van Nuys airport, Scandia restaurant on the Sunset Strip and Hughes Market in Culver City. According to a Box news item on 19 Sep 1977, the production then moved to Washington, D.C. and shot on location from 9 Sep 1977 to 11 Sep 1977.
       Articles in the 10 Aug 1977 HR and the 16 Sep 1977 Long Beach Independent-Press-Telegram reported Jewison’s plan to spend six months dubbing and editing the film at Pinewood Studios outside of London so that it would be ready for release by Easter 1978.
       In an interview in production materials in AMPAS library files, Eszterhas claimed that as late as mid-March 1978, a month before the film’s release, Jewison was sneak previewing different endings to determine which one audiences preferred. On 10 May 1978, Var reported that Jewison screened the film with two different endings and saw there was no difference in the audience reaction. He went with the original ending because he found the triumphant version in which “Kovak” lived, which Stallone preferred, to be “unsatisfactory,” according to an article in the 20 Nov 1978 LAT.
       On 24 Jan 1978, HR announced that F.I.S.T. would have its world premiere on the opening night of the 1978 Los Angeles International Film Exposition (Filmex), 13 Apr 1978, at the Plitt Theatre in Century City. The publication reported on 13 Apr 1978 that it was “the first film to sell out opening night in the exposition’s eight-year history.” An article in the 2 Dec 1977 LAT reported that the movie was scheduled to open in Dubuque, IA on 25 Apr 1978, then in other cities the following week. Al Fitter, United Artists’s VP for sales and distribution, said he and Jewison wanted to reward the city for its cooperation during production. According to a 1 May 1978 United Artists press release and a news item in the 3 May 1978 Var, the premiere at the Dubuque Cinema Center was also a gala event that raised money for three local organizations.
       A 27 Feb 1978 news item in HR reported that F.I.S.T. would open on 26 Apr 1978 in 100 theaters, then open nationwide in 250 additional theaters on 21 Jun 1978. According to an article in Var on 15 Mar 1978, the film’s opening in New York City, scheduled for 26 Apr 1978, was jeopardized when a writer named Lionel White requested that the New York Federal court prevent the film’s release in a lawsuit brought against United Artists and Jewison. The suit claimed that the studio and the director plagiarized his book, Rafferty, the film rights to which were sold in Apr 1967 to production company D. Constantine Films, White’s co-plaintiff in the suit. On 22 Mar 1978, however, Var reported that Lionel White had no knowledge that he was named in the plagiarism suit, which was actually brought by the attorney for D. Constantine Films. DV reported on 26 Apr 1978 that the plaintiffs dropped their request to stop the movie’s New York opening and, according to a 26 Apr 1978 review in NYT, F.I.S.T. opened as scheduled that day in New York.
       Var reported that the other notable opening took place in Minneapolis, MN, where the movie played at a theater known for screening pornographic movies.
       According to LAT, F.I.S.T.’s television rights were presold for $7.5 million to ABC, which scheduled it to be broadcast on 23 May 1982, according to the 22 May 1982 TV Guide.
       F.I.S.T.’s critical reception was mildly positive at times: the 14 Apr 1978 DV praised the performances and the contributions of associate producer Patrick Palmer, and the 14 May 1978 NYT commended the film for opening a national dialogue on the corrupting power of power. Overall, however, the movie’s reviews were negative. The DV review echoed the 14 Apr 1978 HR critique, which found that the romance between "Kovak" and "Anna" "[deflected] the film away from its central theme" of “Kovak's" rise within the trucking union. Several reviews, including those from the 1 May 1978 Newsweek and the 13 May 1978 Cue, took exception to the star's acting, with the latter publication describing Stallone as "utterly inadequate when a deeper level of acting is required" to bring depth to the “Kovak” role. Newsweek also chastised Jewison for asking audiences to retain sympathy for “Kovak” after it is clear he sold out, while the 8 May 1978 New Yorker found the film "exceptionally genteel, for all its masculine heroics" and the depiction of the labor movement "romanticized," with "none of the halftones of class distinction." The LAT reported that Stallone blamed poor reviews on Jewison’s refusal to shoot the movie that he and Eszterhas wrote; Jewison countered that he shot the film Stallone agreed to do.
       In production materials in AMPAS library files, Joe Eszterhas claimed he wrote the novelization of the movie for Dell Publishing in three months. Reports in LAHExam and the 27 May 1977 HR confirm the publisher paid $400,000 for the paperback rights, reportedly the most ever spent on a novel based on a screenplay to that time. A 2 Jan 1978 news item and a 9 Jan 1978 ad in Publishers Weekly announced that Dell would publish the novel in Mar 1978. On 12 Jul 1978 Var reported the publisher had 750,000 copies in print. A DV news item on 22 Sep 1978 noted that the F.I.S.T. novel’s poor sales mirrored the movie’s poor performance at the box office.
       On 23 Jun 1977, an article in HR announced executive producer Gene Corman’s plans to shoot a “continuation” of F.I.S.T., featuring the son of Stallone’s character seeking vindication for his father’s death, budgeted at $8 million and scheduled to shoot in 1978. However, the existence of such a project has not been confirmed.
      Text appearing after the end credits states: “Our thanks to the People of Dubuque, Iowa and Governor Robert Ray.”