The canceled film of Godzilla from a legendary Slassher director

Ishiro Honda’s original “Gojira” launched himself in Japan in 1954, and helped popularize a genre of giant monster movies that remained ascending for seven decades. Godzilla’s films are still being made to this day, with Toho’s most recent film, “Godzilla less one” that comes out in 2023, and the “Godzilla X Kong: the new empire” of Legendary has been part of the landscape Cinematic For so long, its popularity has increased, it has fallen and has increased again. There have been multiple “finals” in the Godzilla series, and so many reset. It is more flexible and more prone to restart than James Bond.

From 1954 to 1975, Godzilla followed more or less a single continuity, and it is said that the 15 films released during this period are from the era of the showa. From 1975 to 1983, there would be no theater films of Godzilla, with the series restarting in 1984 with the launch of “The Return of Godzilla” by Koji Hashimoto, a direct sequel to the 1954 original that ignored the 14 sequelae. It is said that the seven films released from 1984 to 1995 are part of the Heisei era.

Toho has always been a protector of Godzilla, and will only license to his favorite monster in specific circumstances. It was vital that if another company made a Godzilla movie, it was a high -profile film with an adequate budget and impressive production values. In 1983, it seems that the American filmmaker Steve Miner had reached a co -financing agreement with Toho to make his own Godzilla film. Miner, in 1983, was better known as Slasher’s director, since he made “on Friday 13, Part II” and “Friday The 13th Part III”.

Miner’s trip developing his own Godzilla movie, which will be called “Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D”, is detailed in Steve Ryfle’s book “The favorite Mon-Star star of Japan: the unauthorized biography of Big G”.

History tells that the miner was a big fan of Godzilla, and worked on his own treatment for what would be the first Godzilla film produced by the United States. He showed his treatment to the superiors and Toho and, surprisingly, agreed to co -finance it. The only mining work was to build a script and obtain an American study to accept financing the film the rest of the way.

The script was the easy part. The miner hired Fred Dekker to write the script. Dekker’s name is well known to genre fans, since he wrote “Night of the Creeps”, “The Monster Squad” and “Robocop 3.” Miner asked Dekker to write “Godzilla: king of the monsters in 3-D” specifically because he was not a Godzilla fan; Mining needed someone to pay more attention to history and structure than the fan service. Dekker agreed and came up with a traditional type of Godzilla’s story, restarting the franchise again.

From the first days of the project, said Miner:

“I had always been a fan since I was a child. Once I saw him as an adult, I realized that this could be remote like a good movie. My original idea was to do it in 3D. I just did it. ‘Friday 13 in 3DAnd I wanted to make a good 3D movie, and I thought the miniatures would lend themselves to make good 3D effects. So it was a combination of trying to make a very good monster movie and do it in 3D. I had to get the rights, so I went to Japan and made a deal with the people of Toho to co -finance the development of the project, me and toho. ”

Everything was ready.

In the script, a meteorite that passes causes an automated nuclear attack, which leads to an explosion in the South Pacific. The bomb seems to wake up a long -term underwater monster, Godzilla, which, throughout the film, gradually touches land in the United States. The monster, the human characters then learn, is looking for their dead baby, rescued from the ocean by the army. The climax took place on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco.

It was said that Dekker models his script less in Godzilla films and more about the new rise of high -end adventure films like Steven Spielberg was doing at that time. Dekker, in “Favorite Mon-Star from Japan”, was summoned by saying that he wanted this movie to feel like a James Bond movie; Something slippery and exciting, does not depend on the mere monster chaos. He said specifically that he did not want his movie to be “cheesy.” According to the reports, Miner approached Powers Boothe about appearing in the movie, as well as a very young Demi Moore, then a better known star for the monster movie “Parasite”. Miner even commissioned a graphic script for “Monsters in 3-D”, and hired several notable artists to draw their film and design a new version of Godzilla. David W. Allen had to provide Stop-Motion effects for Godzilla, and Rick Baker was hired (but did not work) in a head of an animatronics Godzilla.

However, the project was canceled when Miner could not find an American study willing to spend the millions necessary to do so. The budget should be $ 30 million, and Miner had not yet shown that it could exercise such a budget. Then Toho began working in his 1984 film “The Return of Godzilla”, and the interest changed. The movie simply failed.

Miner, luckily, continued making interesting horror movies. He moved to “House”, then the excellent “sorcerer”, Michael Myers’s movie “Halloween H20: 20 years later” and Gator’s giant movie “Lake Planid.” Maybe someone would let him make a Godzilla movie now.