Short answers, pulled from the story.
Flesh and Blood earned only 100,000 dollars against a production budget of 6.5 million dollars, making it a box office bomb upon its August 1985 release. Orion Pictures gave it a limited theatrical release only in Los Angeles and New York City, and by 1986 it had moved to HBO.
Flesh and Blood was directed by Paul Verhoeven and was his first English-language film. Verhoeven was already established as the highest-profile Dutch filmmaker in the world before taking on the project.
The script was based on a fifty-page outline by Gerard Soeteman, originally titled The Mercenaries or God's Own Butchers, which Soeteman had developed around 1970. The story drew inspiration from The Wild Bunch, Floris, Vera Cruz, and The Crimson Pirate, with The Wild Bunch as the primary influence.
Hauer wanted to cultivate a reputation for heroic characters, while Verhoeven intended to portray moral ambiguity and depict the Middle Ages as a stinking time in which to live. By December 1984, after filming, Hauer told a journalist that Verhoeven used his charisma for smut. Verhoeven acknowledged in 1991 that their friendship was ruined during the production.
Berserk creator Kentaro Miura stated in a 2003 interview, given when he won the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize's Award for Excellence for 2002, that he based the design of protagonist Guts on the character Martin as portrayed by Rutger Hauer in the film.
The score was composed by Basil Poledouris and conducted by the London Symphony Orchestra. La-La Land Records released an extended CD edition in 2013, containing nearly twice as much music as the original 1985 LP and CD release by Varèse Sarabande.