The original script was much more faithful to the original Agatha Christie novel with the setting on an island and the original grim conclusion of the book. However, producer Harry Alan Towers changed it at the last second when he realized that it would be cheaper to shoot in the African outback and that the novel's ending is less marketable than Christie's happier resolution from the play version of the story.
Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, Ronald Lacey, Peter Cushing, Robert Vaughn, and Oliver Reed were all offered roles in this adaptation but declined.
In recent years, it has come to light that much of Christie's plot appears to have been inspired by a little known 1930 play by Owen Davis entitled The Ninth Guest, which utilized the same framework of people being brought together by an unknown host who proceeds to kill them one by one. Columbia Pictures' atmospheric film version of The 9th Guest (1934) has never been released on home video, but is now in the public domain and can be found on eBay and iOffer.
Had he agreed to be in the film, Oliver Reed would have joined Herbert Lom in appearing in two versions of "Ten Little Indians", as both had already appeared in the 1974 film adaptation.