John Scott explained with sadness over the events, in a 2016 interview conducted by film music historian John Burlingame, that Cousteau's new wife had taken over the project when Cousteau died, and that she was very stingy with money and even wanted to use stock music for the project instead of an original score, but Scott contacted them and offered to do the score as a way of paying tribute to Cousteau (with whom he had worked with on several projects for almost two decades), even suggesting a musical tribute set to dialogue (which was immediately axed by Cousteau's wife).