Hollywood is always looking for familiar properties with pre-sold appeal that can be used as the basis of “tent-pole movies”. Traditionally, these movies prop up the rest of a studio’s release schedule. Done right, they can be the foundation of an ongoing franchise. When TriStar Pictures bought the rights to make an American Godzilla, they expected a trilogy. Instead they unleashed a monstrous disappointment.

Made in America

The American Godzilla started with producer Henry G. Saperstein. Saperstein had worked with the Japanese company, Toho, on releasing their movies in the States. “For ten years I pressured Toho to make one in America. Finally they agreed,” Saperstein recalled.

Saperstein had a meeting with two other producers, Cary Woods and Robert N. Fried, to discuss the possibility of a live-action movie based on the Mr. Magoo cartoons. Woods and Fried had a production deal with Sony, but they passed on Mr. Magoo. So Saperstein mentioned he also had the rights to Godzilla.

Woods and Fried were excited by the possibilities of an American Godzilla movie. But they met with resistance from the studio. “We pitched the idea to Columbia outright,” said Woods. “Their response was they felt it had potential for camp.”

An International Brand

Undeterred, the producers took their project to Columbia’s sister company, TriStar Pictures. The reaction was the same. TriStar wasn’t interested. But an up-and-coming vice-president of production at TriStar, Chris Lee, expressed interest in Godzilla. He had grown up on the Japanese movies as a kid and “always wanted to do” one of his own.

Lee wanted to take the American Godzilla back to its Japanese roots. “I wanted to reflect not what the movie series had become, but how it started out,” Lee said. ” I loved the goofier Godzillas too, but I knew a new version was about taking it seriously. You can’t consciously set out to make it campy.”

Unfortunately, Lee wasn’t in a position to greenlight a project at TriStar. Woods was discussing his frustrations with his wife when she suggested going straight to the top. She told him to pitch his movie to the head of Sony Entertainment, Peter Guber. Woods was worried about approaching the boss in the office, so he flew down to Florida where Guber had a speaking engagement.

Guber saw Godzilla as an international brand. So he set up production at TriStar and negotiations began with ToHo over how the character would be portrayed. According to Fried, the Japanese company was “very protective” of Godzilla. “They even sent me a four-page, single-spaced memo describing the physical requirements the Godzilla in our film had to have.”

Making a Monster

Once the specifics of the deal with ToHo were ironed out, Godzilla was fast-tracked at TriStar. The movie was announced in the pages of Variety back in 1992. This pre-dates Jurassic Park which was scheduled to be released the following year.

Peter Guber tasked Cary Wood with putting together a creative team for Godzilla. He approached screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio for the project. They were not enthusiastic, but their previous movie, Little Monsters, was known as the movie that bankrupted Vestron Entertainment, so they eventually accepted the assignment.

Woods and Fried were very excited about the original script which they described as a serious science fiction movie. The story would have focused on a scientist who vows to destroy Godzilla after the monster kills her husband. The writers compared their story to Moby Dick and Aliens.

The producers were hoping to hire an A-list director for Godzilla. They were very interested in someone like Tim Burton, but they found that a lot of well-known directors were reluctant to associate themselves with the Japanese movie monster.

At the suggestion of Chris Lee, Woods and Fried approached Roland Emmerich about directing. Emmerich could not have been less interested. “I was never a big Godzilla fan,” he said. Other candidates included Joe Dante, James Cameron, Terry Gilliam and Ridley Scott.

The producers scored a major coup when they managed to sign director Jan De Bont hot off of the surprise hit, Speed. De Bont was very enthusiastic about making Godzilla. He watched the Japanese movies as a child in the Netherlands and was instantly won over. “It’s like some people fall in love with westerns or other things,” De Bont explained. “I loved Godzilla movies.”

Need for Speed

The clock was ticking for De Bont to make his monster movie. He had a deal to make more movies for Fox, but the studio was willing to give him a two year window to make Godzilla for TriStar in exchange for a sequel to Speed.

Initially, things seemed to be going well. TriStar flew De Bont out to Japan to meet with the executives at Toho. By all accounts, it was a real love fest. Ironically, it was the upper management at Sony that had objections to the project moving forward.

Executive vice president of production Amy Pascal was in charge. Remember that she and her team had passed on Godzilla until Cary Wood went over their heads to get approval from Peter Guber. According to De Bont, Pascal didn’t know anything about Godzilla and thought American audiences had never heard of him.

“So we wanted to clear the way with a really good script that they basically couldn’t refuse,” De Bont said. He worked well with Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio who found De Bont’s feedback useful.

Dollars and Sense

Unfortunately, De Bont’s take on Godzilla became a victim of corporate reshuffling. After a string of expensive flops like North and Last Action Hero, Peter Guber resigned. Sony Pictures took a $3.2 billion dollar write-off including $500 million dollars in unfinished projects. As a result, Sony started watching the bottom line very closely.

As written, it was estimated that De Bont’s movie would have cost around $140-180 million dollars. Officially, Sony balked at budget, but De Bont believes there were other reasons. He believes Sony wanted to Americanize Godzilla. “They wanted a different type of Godzilla that more references a T-rex.”

Rossio and Elliot rewrote the script to bring down the budget. Sony estimated the rewrite would cost around $120 million, but DeBont insisted he could make it for $100. Ultimately, De Bont couldn’t come to terms with Sony and they bought out his contract. He left to make Twister and Sony pulled the plug on Godzilla.

A Dopey Idea

Sony began shopping around for directors. They hired a screenwriter to do a rewrite the script, but things weren’t moving forward. Chris Lee realized that the shake-up at Sony management was an opportunity to get Godzilla back in production, so he went back to his friends, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin.

Since Emmerich originally turned down the project in 1992, he and Devlin had developed a reputation for modestly budgeted box office hits like Universal Soldier and Stargate. This was very appealing to the new budget-conscious studio management.

Lee met with them while they were filming what would be the biggest hit of their careers, Independence Day. According to Devlin, they kept turning Lee down and he kept coming back to ask them again. But they weren’t interested. “Both of us thought it was a dopey idea the first time we talked,” Devlin recalled. “When Chris came back to us, we still thought it was a dopey idea.”

Emmerich and Devlin planned to follow-up Independence Day with another science fiction disaster flick. Ground Zero would have been their take on The Right Stuff. The story was about a bunch of astronauts who go into space to prevent an asteroid from striking the earth. The problem was, there were already two asteroid movies in development, Deep Impact and Armageddon. So Emmerich reconsidered the dopiness of Godzilla.

Emmerich agreed to make the movie on the condition that they could re-imagine their star monster. “I told Sony that I would do the film – but on my own terms, with Godzilla as a fast-moving animal out of nature rather than some strange kind of creature.”

Making a Monster Part 2: Making a Fast Animal

Although they liked the existing script, Devlin and Emmerich decided to scrap it and start from scratch. Emmerich later complained that while the existing script was good, he didn’t like that it ended with a climactic battle between Godzilla and another monster. “The last half was like watching two creatures go at it… I simply don’t like that.”

Emmerich was very attached to his idea of a sleeker, faster Godzilla than the lumbering monster from the Japanese movies. “If you do the math, even if it walks at a gingerly pace, it’s still covering a lot of territory quickly,” the director explained. “Godzilla can outrun any taxi, and that was the core idea for the movie. No one can catch it. Dean and I realized we could make a different Godzilla, a movie about a hunt, about hide-and-seek.”

Once Emmerich started seeing concept art for his new monster, he started getting really excited about the project. Following the success of Independence Day, Sony was excited to have Emmerich’s next movie. Their primary concern was that Toho wouldn’t approve the drastic redesign of their beloved character.

So Emmerich flew to Japan along with production designer Patrick Tatopoulos to share their ideas with Toho. “They were speechless,” Emmerich recalled. “They stared at it and there was silence for a couple minutes, and then they said, ‘Could you come back tomorrow?’ I thought for sure we didn’t have a movie then.”

Shogo Tomiyama was the producer of the Toho Godzilla series at the time. He went to visit Tomoyuki Tanaka, once of the characters co-creators who was unable to attend the meeting due to failing health. He wasn’t able to bring any visual aids from the meeting so he described the new Godzilla as being “similar to Carl Lewis with long legs.”

The next morning, Toho approved the designs for the new Godzilla. According to Emmerich and Devlin, they were excited to have a radically different version of their character. Some have speculated that the collapse of the De Bont film was a factor.

The Japanese series had been running on fumes in recent years. Toho hoped that an American movie would revitalize the character. They also knew that Sony was having a tough time finding an A-list director to make the movie. If they didn’t approve the new designs, they were afraid Emmerich would walk off the project and the movie would be cancelled.

A Godzilla Who… Spawns?

With Toho on board, Emmerich and Devlin set about writing their script. They secluded themselves in Emmerich’s Mexican vacation home and hammered out the first draft in five and a half weeks. They re-conceived Godzilla not as a giant monster, but as an animal.

That meant getting rid of things like his atomic breath. The new Godzilla wasn’t just a fast runner. He would also procreate quickly and asexually. Emmerich and Devlin imagined Godzilla laying a bunch of eggs that would quickly generate a whole lot of baby Godzillas.

The new script was completed right around the time Sony was switching management again. Mark Canton was out and John Calley was in as Preisdent of Sony Pictures. Calley read the script and remarked, “We’re all artists here and we try not to confuse ourselves with commercial considerations. Just kidding.”

Calley was so certain of Godzilla’s success that he signed a three-picture deal with Emmerich and Devlin’s Centropolis Entertainment. The new management was certain that Emmerich and Devlin would be able to recreate the success of Independence Day for their new franchise.

It’s a Secret

Emmerich and Devlin had ideas about how their movie should be marketed. They wanted to keep the new look of their creature a secret. At first, the studio was unsure about the approach. Not being able to show the movie’s star created some issues for some of the potential licensing deals. But Sony ultimately gave into the filmmakers’ demands.

In late 1997, images of the new Godzilla leaked from some of the licensees. Fan reaction to the redesign was swift and decidedly negative. Devlin tried to calm angry fans by telling the press that some fake designs were intentionally distributed in order to identify leakers. Deals were cancelled with Tiger Electronics and Fruit of the Loom. But it turns out, the leaked images were real.

Sony started promoting the movie well in advance of its release date. The second teaser trailer was attached to the 1997 Tristar release, Starship Troopers. It included the infamous tagline “Size Does Matter.” The tag came from a marketing meeting in which someone wondered why audience who had already seen Jurassic Park would want to see Godzilla. It was a valid question.

Does Size Really Matter?

Godzilla‘s final budget became a well-guarded secret. The official price tag was $136 million, but Robert Fried estimated that it was closer to $150 million. On top of that, TriStar spent $80 million dollars promoting the movie worldwide.

The tracking numbers on Godzilla were through the roof. Sony used that as leverage to get a bigger percentage of the box office gross from exhibitors. They also demanded that Godzilla be shown on more screens for a wider release. Other studios moved their releases out of the way for fear of being crushed by Godzilla.

Sony was feeling so confident that they paid Toho and extra $5 million dollars for the option to make a sequel. At the time, Devlin confessed “We have a Godzilla trilogy in mind.”

Racing the Release Date

Meanwhile, the special effects for the movie were running behind schedule. The digital effects team was working around the clock to make the announced May 20 release date.At this point, Sony did something that movie studios almost never do. They offered to push back the release date. But Emmerich and Devlin insisted they could make the deadline.

“We literally finished the cut and went to the printer,” Devlin said. “And we didn’t even have a chance to screen it for the studio. It was just like, ‘We have to go. We’ll never make enough prints to get them into the theater on time if we make any adjustments’.”

Calley, the new president of Sony, was reportedly furious when he saw the movie. He wanted to make several changes including redubbing actress Maria Pitillo. But there wasn’t time to do anything.

The good news was that Godzilla was ready for Memorial Day weekend. Sony was hoping to break the record set by Lost World: Jurassic Park with a $100 million dollar opening. Instead, Godzilla earned a little more than half that amount.

While the movie didn’t meet expectations, it still sold a lot of tickets. Unfortunately, word of mouth was toxic. In the second week of release, ticket sales dropped by almost 60%. It ended up taking two weeks for Godzilla to earn the $100 million dollars it was supposed to take in during its opening weekend.

Domestically, Godzilla ended up grossing under $140 million dollars. It was expected to be one of the top movies of the year, but it ended up in 9th place behind Doctor Dolittle and The Waterboy. Emmerich blamed the movie’s underwhelming performance on Sony’s marketing. “It was a good idea – ‘Size Does Matter’ – but because they put it on every available fucking billboard it became a joke.”

Critics blasted the movie once they were finally able to see it. And it was nominated for several Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture. Ultimately it won Worst Supporting Actress and Worst Remake or Sequel.

Maybe One Was Enough…

Despite weak domestic ticket sales, Sony still planned to move forward with a Godzilla sequel. Internationally, the movie made almost $250 million dollars for a total gross of almost $380 million. There was also an animated series which was performing very well on Fox television. Sony was still interested in the Godzilla business.

That started to change when Sony brought up the idea of a Godzilla sequel to their licensing partners. It turns out, a lot of companies took a bath on merchandise for the first movie. A lot of that came from Emmerich’s insistence that the creature not be shown before the movie was in theaters.

That meant the toys couldn’t even ship until after Memorial Day weekend. Most movie tie-ins capitalize on the pre-release hype to sell a lot of product. By the time the Godzilla toys hit the shelves, fans were already disappointed by the movie.

Emmerich and Devlin hired a screenwriter to work on a potential sequel. But they ended up leaving the project over budget disputes with Sony. Sony considered rebooting the series but ultimately let their option expire.

Toho eventually resold the American rights to Godzilla to Warner Brothers. The result was the 2014 Godzilla, its sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong. That movie will tie into Kong: Skull Island which is part of a shared “Monsterverse”.

But Emmerich and Devlin’s version of the character hasn’t been completely forgotten. Toho recycled the TriStar version of their monster by introducing it in the Japanese series with the new name Zilla.

0 0 vote Article Rating

Advertisements