A canceled Godzilla movie from a legendary director

Released in Japan in 1954, Ishirō Honda’s original “Gojira” helped popularize a genre of giant monster films that would remain prevalent for seven decades. Godzilla movies are still being made to this day Toho’s latest film “Godzilla Minus One” Coming out in 2023, the legendary “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” will be released in 2024. Godzilla has been a part of the cinematic landscape for a long time, and his popularity has risen, fallen and then risen again. There have been multiple “finals” in the Godzilla series, and numerous reboots. It’s more flexible and more susceptible to reboots than James Bond.

From 1954 until 1975, Godzilla followed roughly a single continuity, and the fifteen films released during this period are said to belong to the Showa era. From 1975 to 1983, there were no theatrical Godzilla films, with the series being rebooted in 1984 with the release of Koji Hashimoto’s The Return of Godzilla, a direct sequel to the 1954 original that ignored all fourteen sequels. The seven films released from 1984 to 1995 are said to be part of the Heisei era.

Toho has always been protective of Godzilla, and would only license his favorite monster under specific circumstances. It was imperative that if another company made a Godzilla movie, it had to be a high-profile film with a decent budget and impressive production values. In 1983, American director Steve Miner apparently struck a co-financing deal with Toho to produce his own Godzilla film. Miner rose to fame in 1983 as a slasher film director, having directed the films “Friday the 13th Part II” and “Friday the 13th Part III”.

Miner’s journey in developing his Godzilla movie, which will be called “Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D,” is detailed in Steve Riffle’s book “Japan’s Favorite Moon Star: The Unauthorized Biography of The Big G.”

The story goes that Miner was a huge fan of Godzilla, and worked on his own treatment for what would become the first American-produced Godzilla film. He showed his treatment to the higher-ups and Toho, and surprisingly, they agreed to participate in financing it. Miner’s only task was to put together the script and get the American studio to agree to finance the film the rest of the way.

The script was the easy part. Miner hired Fred Dekker to write the screenplay. The Dekker name is well known to fans of the genre, e.g And he continued writing “Night of the Creeps,” “Monster Squad” and “RoboCop 3”. Miner asked Decker to write “Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D” specifically because he was not a fan of Godzilla; Miner needed someone who would pay more attention to story and structure rather than fan service. Decker agreed, created a more traditional kind of Godzilla story, and restarted the series.

Miner said of the project’s early days:

“I’ve always been a fan of it since I was a kid. Once I saw it as an adult, I knew it could be remade as a good movie. My original idea was to do it in 3D. I just did.”Friday the 13th in 3DI wanted to make a good 3D movie, and I thought miniatures would make good 3D effects. So it was a combination of trying to make a really good monster movie and doing it in 3D. I had to get the rights, so I went to Japan and made an agreement with the Toho people to co-finance the development of the project, me and Toho.”

Everything is set.

In the scenario, a passing meteor triggers an automated nuclear strike, resulting in an explosion in the South Pacific. The bomb seems to awaken a long-sleeping undersea monster – Godzilla – who gradually throughout the film makes landfall in the United States. The human characters later learn that the monster is searching for his dead child who was rescued from the ocean by the army. The climax occurred on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco.

It has been said that Decker was modeling his screenplay less on the Godzilla films and more on the new rise of high-end adventure films like Steven Spielberg was making at the time. Decker was quoted in “Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star” as saying that he wanted this film to look like a James Bond film. Something cool and exciting, and not just based on monster chaos. He specifically said that he did not want his film to be “cheesy.” Miner reportedly approached Powers Boothe about appearing in the film, as well as a very young Demi Moore, then a rising star best known for the monster movie “Parasite.” Miner even commissioned a storyboard for “Monsters in 3-D,” hired several high-profile artists to map his film, and design a new version of Godzilla. David W. Allen was to provide the stop-motion effects for Godzilla, and Rick Baker was assigned (but did not do any work) as Godzilla’s animatronic head.

However, the project was canceled when Miner was unable to find an American studio willing to spend the millions needed to make it happen. The budget was scheduled to be a whopping $30 million at the time, and Miner had yet to prove he could use such a budget. Then Toho began working on their 1984 film The Return of Godzilla, and interest shifted. The film simply fell flat.

Fortunately, Miner continued to make interesting horror films. Move on to “House,” then the excellent “Warlock,” then Michael Myers’ “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later,” And the giant alligator movie “Lake Placid.” Maybe someone will let him make a Godzilla movie now.