The Sea Beast is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Millard Webb, starring John Barrymore and Dolores Costello. The film was a major commercial success and one of the biggest pictures of 1926. The Sea Beast is an adaptation of the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, a story about a monomaniacal hunt for a great white whale. However, the film alters the novel's plotline by establishing prequel and sequel elements that are not in the original story—such as the romancing of Esther and Ahab's safe return, respectively—and substitutes a happy ending for Melville's original tragic one. Some of the characters in the film do not appear in Melville's original novel.