"The Godfather" was a blockbuster hit the day it opened in 1972 and since that time has become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed movies of all time.

When Francis Ford Coppola adapted Mario Puzo's bestselling novel "The Godfather" into a major motion picture, he took a pot-boiler novel and spun it into box office gold. It was the first major blockbuster of the 1970s, and one of many classic films that made the decade a revered and fabled time in cinema history. "The Godfather" not only launched Coppola, and actors such as Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and James Caan, but it also resurrected Marlon Brando's career from oblivion. By most accounts, it is considered one of the greatest films ever made, if not the greatest.

So what right does anyone have in turning "The Godfather" into a video game? Shouldn't that be the domain of films like "Tron"? In TwitchGuru's continuing series on games and films, we look back at Coppola's masterpiece, and the controversy surrounding the game it inspired.

During the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of literary properties were turned into movies, just as they are today. There was certainly a lot of major studio schlock based on best-sellers, like the films adapted from the work of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann. But a great director could take a popular "beach reading" best-seller and turn it into something special, just like Steven Spielberg did with "Jaws," and Francis Ford Coppola did with "The Godfather."

Both Coppola and Puzo did "The Godfather" because they needed the money, but Coppola was able to take the novel beyond its pulpy origins. Before he wrote "The Godfather," Puzo had written several well-reviewed books, such as "The Dark Arena" and "The Fortunate Pilgrim," which didn't sell. He decided to write "The Godfather," initially entitled "The Mafia," primarily to make a buck, and with a $5,000 advance from Putnam, he started working on the novel in 1966. After writing 100 pages, Puzo needed more money, and got a $12,000 option on the book from Paramount.

When "The Godfather" was published in 1969, it hit the "New York Times" best-seller list, and stayed there for 67 weeks. It sold a million copies in hardcover, six million in paperback. The book was announced as a film by Paramount on September 12, 1969. With the success of "Easy Rider" the same year, Hollywood started looking to young, maverick directors to lead the way. They also looked to these directors because they knew how to make films cheaply, and Paramount wanted to budget "The Godfather" to be somewhere in the $2-$3 million dollar range or less. They considered making the movie like "The FBI," a popular TV show at the time that, like "Dragnet," dramatized real-crime stories.

This was an idealistic time when people still thought they could change the world, and young directors thought they could take over Hollywood. The attitude among young directors who wanted to take on the system was to make a big movie that would put you on the map to later have the money and the clout to do what you wanted. If you could make a big movie your way without compromising your integrity, then even better.

The Godfather was reportedly offered to 30 or so directors before it was handed to Coppola. Among the directors who turned it down were Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, "Day of the Jackal"), Arthur Penn ("Bonnie and Clyde"), Franklin J. Schaffner ("Planet of the Apes," "Papillon"), Peter Bogdanovich ("The Last Picture Show"), Peter Yates ("Bullitt"), Richard Lester ("Hard Days Night"), Richard Brooks ("In Cold Blood") and Costa-Gavras ("Z").

Peter Bart, then the vice president of production at Paramount and today the editor in chief of "Variety," reportedly recommended Coppola. Producers Al Ruddy and Gray Frederickson made the initial overture to Coppola, who didn't want to make the movie either. Coppola wanted to make smaller movies instead, like "The Conversation." But he owed Warner Brothers $300,000 in development costs after the demise of Zoetrope, which was the company he formed under the Warner umbrella with long-time friend George Lucas. In addition to the money he owed, Coppola also had a family to support.

As Coppola recalled in "Cigar Aficionado" magazine, he told Lucas: "The book is so sleazy."

"Well find something in it that you like," Lucas replied.

Coppola went to the library, started researching the mob, then went back to "The Godfather," taking notes and underlying passages. Finally he found a hook. The "jewel" of the book was the relationship between the father and his sons. Puzo had already written a screenplay adaptation of "The Godfather" that needed an overhaul, and Paramount knew Coppola could fix it because he was already a successful screenwriter (while shooting "The Godfather" he won the Academy Award for writing "Patton").

Coppola gave Puzo full credit for the characters and storyline, for "creating the world" as we film geeks like to say. With his screenplay adaptation, Coppola felt he took the right parts from the book. And as reported in Michael Schumacher's biography of the director, titled "Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life," Coppola also felt a good movie adaptation of a novel is "when you can do something that wasn't in the original but is so much like the original that it should have been."

Although the book was a hot title, Paramount didn't see "The Godfather" as having blockbuster potential. Paramount had just made another mafia film, "The Brotherhood," starring Kirk Douglas with fake dark skin that looked like tan-spray, and it flopped. Puzo's script took place in modern day, but Coppola insisted that the story stay in the original time period of the novel, and had to be shot in New York, which the studio balked at because it would be too expensive. Although Coppola came close to losing his job a number of times, he somehow managed to stay on the film. Figuring he would eventually be fired anyway, he stood his ground on what he wanted for the film, and ultimately got it.