Production started in 1991 and was intended to be super-spectacle with extensive location shooting in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. Tolomush Okeev was supposed to direct the movie, but he was soon replaced by Peter Duffell. The screenplay was re-written multiple times during the shootings, adding several scenes of Genghis Khan's youth. After a few weeks, Duffell left the set and was replaced by Ken Annakin. Antonio Margheriti served as a second unit director. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the whole project collapsed. It was almost two decades before an attempt to salvage the project was undertaken to assemble a feature film and a mini-series.
His first film in over a decade, and the final film for Bekim Fehmiu.