The Director of TWISTER and THE HAUNTING Tried to Make a GODZILLA Movie in the 90s

Jan de Bon, the director behind Speed, Twister, and The Haunting, at one point in his career tried to make a Godzilla movie. This was in the ‘90s before Roland Emmerich made his awful 1998 film.

During a recent interview with Polygon, de Bon opened up about his career, talked about how he was originally set to direct Minority Report and Steven Spielberg was supposed to direct The Haunting. They ended up switching projects over scheduling.

It was during this time where de Bon was talking to Spielberg about The Haunting, where he was also trying to develop an American take on Godzilla. When asked about what happened with that project, the filmmaker revealed what happened and why he never got to make his version of the movie.

“It wasn’t too big. I went to Japan, I met with the people at the studio, and they loved my version. It was basically that the visual effects at the time, and also special effects — like the way they did in the [original] Godzilla movies, which, I had copies of all of them — it became a battle about the budget. So the person who ended up doing the movie said that he could do it for like $40-50 million less than my budget. Mine was, I think, around $100 million or so. Of course, that never happens — and his film ended up costing almost twice as much as my budget. Unfortunately, they believed him.”

He went on to talk about the script and his take on Godzilla, saying:

“But the writers I had were fantastic, the script was so good. It stayed true to the old Godzilla movies, but then taking place in the United States, which [the other movie] kept. But then they started by changing Godzilla! You cannot do that! After so many years, and everybody loving Godzilla, why would you want to change it? That was a big mistake. And then it became all about special effects, and that is never a good thing. I met some of the directors who did the earlier Godzilla movies — they were nice people, and the studio loved the take on it. We were really far into pre-production: set designs, locations, and then they saw the budget. “Oh no, we don’t spend that much money on the Godzilla movie.” Then they end up spending twice as much money.”

That’s a shame. It seems like de Bon’s take on the film would have been a much better Godzilla movie than what Emmerich delivered. That movie was complete crap.