Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson later starred together in another John Sturges movie, "The Great Escape."

"The Magnificent Seven" is a remake of the famous 1956 Kurosawa film "The Seven Samurai". It was surprisingly easy to translate the characters from Samurai to cowboys, because the myth of the old west is very similar to the myth of feudal Japan. Some would even argue that the cowboy myth was created from Japanese history.

James Coburn was a big fan of "The Seven Samurai," and his favorite character in that film eventually became the character he ended up playing in this film.