Three of the statuettes still exist and are conservatively valued at over $1 million each. This makes them some of the most valuable film props ever made; indeed they are now worth more than the film cost to make.
Two "Maltese Falcons" were used for the film because Humphrey Bogart dropped the original during shooting. The original falcon is on display in the movie museum at Warner Bros. studios; its tail feathers are visibly dented from Bogey's flub sixty years ago.
Warner Bros. planned to change the name of the film to "The Gent from Frisco" because the novel's title had already been used on the 1931 version. The studio eventually agreed to keep the original title at John Huston's insistence.
When he completed the screenplay, John Huston storyboarded it, allowing him the chance to give great thought to pictorial composition and camera movement. This whole set-up took two days to rehearse.
When she landed the part of Ilsa in Casablanca, Ingrid Bergman watched this film repeatedly so as to study Humphrey Bogart's acting technique.
When Spade visits the murder scene of his partner, in the background can be seen a poster for a film called Swing Your Lady, an in-joke directed at Humphrey Bogart who was one of the stars of this B-movie. Bogart referred to it as "the worst picture I ever made".
When Warner Brothers saw how successful the film was, the studio decided to produce a sequel. Director John Huston had written the script for the sequel, which was to be titled 'Three Strangers'. The film was supposed to contain many of the primary characters from The Maltese Falcon, specifically Sam Spade. Before the film reached production; however, Dashiell Hammett informed Warner Brothers that he owned the rights to the characters in The Maltese Falcon and even though the studio had purchased the rights to novel, it did not own the rights to the characters in the novel. The sequel was never made; but, John Huston's script for Three Strangers was eventually filmed. Although the characters differed from The Maltese Falcon, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet both appeared in the film.
Word-for-word and scene-for-scene virtually the same as the original novel.