Hall Bartlett produced a motion picture version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1973. It features beautiful cinematography and competent voice acting through the voices of James Franciscus, Juliet Mills, Hal Holbrook, Kelly Harmon, Dorothy McGuire, and Richard Crenna. Bach picketed the motion picture, declaring that it had distorted his book and lost its message.

Most viewers seem to find it utterly, almost painfully, boring.