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The film recovered its $5-million budget worldwide, grossing $14.9 million in North America and $5 million abroad.
While The Osterman Weekend was Hauer’s first leading role in an American film, Nighthawks is his first appearance in an American film.
Nighthawks refers to the men and women street cops of the New York City Crime Unit who patrol the city at nighttime.
The story was originally planned as The French Connection III by screenwriter David Shaber at Twentieth Century Fox, and would have seen Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle team up with a wisecracking police officer, to be possibly played by Richard Pryor. The main plot was the same, but when Hackman showed reluctance to do a third movie as Doyle, the idea was scrapped and Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the storyline, which Saber then reworked into this movie.
Sylvester Stallone kept tight control over the production of this film, presumably needing a new hit after the lackluster releases of F.I.S.T and Paradise Ally before falling back on the first sequel to Rocky. It has been said by both Stallone and Hauer that there was tension on the set between them, especially after Stallone had original director Gary Nelson replaced with Bruce Malmuth, and had ordered a cable pull (simulating gunshot impact) to be done forcefully. Hauer also had to leave the set several times, after the death if his mother and his best friend forced him back to his native Netherlands. In his autobiography, Hauer credits this film with getting him noticed in Hollywood, and cast in Blade Runner the next year. In a 2014 interview, Stallone expressed regret for some of his behavior throughout the 1980’s, crediting the success of Rocky making him “insufferable.” He wished he “could go back and punch himself in the face.” In a 1993 interview Stallone praised Hauer's performance.
Sylvester Stallone was really disappointed with the way Universal Pictures re-edited the movie (despite the fact that he did his share of re-editing on the movie prior to the studio's interference). He was really upset because of the removal of his dramatic scenes with Lindsay Wagner, including an emotional scene between him and Wagner in a restaurant (only mentioned in the final version of the movie) where his character breaks down and cries after his ex-wife refuses to re-marry him. Universal also deleted most of the graphic and gory scenes due to the concern that the movie would get "X" rating. And indeed, even though it was already deleted for violence by the studio, this movie still got an "X" rating when it was submitted to the M.P.A.A. and it again had to be heavily edited for an "R" rating. To fill time, Stallone apparently wrote more scenes for his character, while removing more of Hauers scenes, which he felt dominated the film.
The cable-car seen in the movie is the Manhattan to Roosevelt Island overhead tramway. It had only opened 5 years earlier, in 1976.
While the Universal Pictures widescreen DVD omits the use of "Brown Sugar" by The Rolling Stones and "I'm a Man" by Keith Emerson, the 2016 Blu-ray release from Shout! Factory restored their usage.
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