Every Unmade Robert Rodriguez Movie (& Why They Didnt Happen)

Every Unmade Robert Rodriguez Movie (& Why They Didn’t Happen)

Robert Rodriguez is known as a maverick of filmmaking, but he has several projects that didn’t come to fruition—here’s everything he didn’t make.

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Robert Rodriguez is one of Hollywood’s biggest mavericks, embracing his own styles and personal passions with starry-eyed conviction, but what happened to the movies Rodriguez didn’t make? One of Hollywood’s A-list directors, his fans praise him for his low-budget prowess and unabashed love for his material, while his critics chide him for his unrestrained, childlike obsessions and immature, boyish approach to storytelling. In either case, it cannot be denied that the filmmaker is one of cinema’s most unique voices, gifted with a creative mind and hands-on moxie.

Rodriguez exploded onto the scene in 1992 with his ultra-cheap, Spanish-language neo-Western, El Mariachi, which broke records for being the lowest-budgeted movie to make over a million dollars at the box office. The director sold himself as a medical experiment to drug clinics to help raise the $7,000 costs and worked on all the technical aspects of the film himself, a tradition that he would repeat even as he acquired more resources throughout his success. As a result, Rodriguez is also a credited editor, cinematographer, composer, and camera operator among other movie-making roles.

It’s no surprise, then, that someone that busy and particular about his projects would have a host of unrealized works. The following is a list of all the films (as well as a TV show) that Rodriguez was attached to at one point, but which never made it to the big screen under his guidance. The list, much like his completed filmography, ranges from violent exploitation to wholesome children’s entertainment, and reveals the massive pool of ideas swirling around in the brain of the “one-man film crew”.

Madman

Robert Rodriguez once owned the film rights to this quirky, irreverent superhero comic book series following the whacky adventures of reanimated crimefighter Frank Einstein. The possibility of a film adaptation helmed by Rodriguez circulated in geek circles for years, in part due to the series’ creator Mike Allred enthusiastically talking about writing and casting throughout 2006 and 2007. However, the project went dark and, in 2015, Allred tweeted that all rights to Madman-related material had reverted back to him. In the meantime, he is focusing his creative efforts on comic books rather than film or television.

Predators

In 1994, Rodriguez wrote a draft of what was supposed to be the third entry into the sci-fi action-horror franchise. The story would have signaled the return of Dutch, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first film, as he tries to escape the Predators’ gladiatorial prison planet. The film would have greatly explored Predator culture, introducing a Predator king who sits atop a throne of skulls, and included genetic experiments on captives to breed slaves and stronger prey. Fox denied Rodriguez due to his inflated budget, but the studio ended up allowing him to use his ideas in the 2010 Predators movie he produced. Despite the inclusion of an alien hunting grounds planet, however, that film differs significantly from his initial draft.

The Mask of Zorro

Before Martin Campbell directed The Mask of Zorro, TriStar Pictures and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment signed on Robert Rodriguez to the film. However, the director’s vision was apparently too violent and expensive for the studios, so they opted to move on to someone else, perhaps disappointed considering Rodriguez’s well-known low-budget techniques. However, he did contribute one crucial element to the final product: the casting of Antonio Banderas in the title role.

Kiss Me Deadly

Rodriguez stated on the Sin City director’s commentary that he had been attached to a remake of the film noir classic, Kiss Me Deadly, but pulled out because he thought it might be overly nostalgic. Considering that Kiss Me Deadly is one of the major influences of the filmmaker’s best friend, Quentin Tarantino, it would have been at least an interesting endeavor. Still, Tarantino extensively references the film in Pulp Fiction, so the idea isn’t entirely lost.

John Carter

Rodriguez’s involvement in an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ time-traveling pulp stories is just one of a long line of failed efforts from various studios to greenlight and produce a John Carter of Mars movie. The director had been working on Sin City when fellow Austin cinephile and now-disgraced founder of Ain’t It Cool News, Harry Knowles, showed him a script written by Poseidon and I Am Legend screenwriter, Mark Protosevich. Rodriguez planned on using the same digital sets as Sin City and wanted to hire legendary artist Frank Frazetta, who illustrated the covers for Rice Burroughs’ books, as the film’s visual designer. However, Rodriguez had resigned from the Director’s Guild of America in response to internal backlash for crediting comic creator Frank Miller as Sin City’s co-director, and Paramount was unable to hire someone unassociated with the DGA.

Barbarella

A remake of the wildly pulpy and cheekily erotic 1968 cult classic, Barbarella, sounds like it would fit the sensibilities of Robert Rodriguez perfectly, so it’s no surprise that legendary B-movie producer Dino De Laurentiis approached him to direct the film for Universal. Rodriguez wanted to cast Rose McGowan, who had previously worked with him on Planet Terror, in the lead role that Jane Fonda originated. However, problems piled up as the studio disagreed with the casting and the budget became inflated. In addition, Rodriguez’s enthusiasm started to die out when a German company offered him funding under the condition of working entirely in Germany. Faced with budgetary issues and wanting to avoid living away from home for too long, the project died.

Red Sonja

If Rose McGowan couldn’t star in Barbarella, then perhaps Rodriguez could cast her as another woman warrior in the remake of the 1985 fantasy film, Red Sonja, this time with more sword and sorcery than sci-fi elements. It seems as if the project stalled in 2009, though, due to nerve damage in McGowan’s arm that prevented her from performing action-heavy roles until the Conan the Barbarian film in 2011. The project was attached to numerous directors, including Simon West, who wanted Amber Heard for the role, and Bryan Singer. Currently, Joey Soloway, creator of the Amazon show Transparent, is signed on to direct.

Women in Chains! TV Show

Although not actually a feature film, Rodriguez’s proposed television series would have placed Rose McGowan in the middle of a women’s prison. The director was shopping the show around different networks such as FX and NBC, but no one ever picked it up. Orange Is the New Black it was not, for the show would have been more like the “women in prison” sub-genre of exploitation movies like The Concrete Jungle and Chained Heat, and would have reportedly featured lots of violence and mud wrestling.

Grindhouse 2

Both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have expressed interest in returning back to the world of Grindhouse, and have shared various ideas on what that would entail, although nothing of the sort has moved forward. While Tarantino stated that he would want to make a kung-fu movie shot in Mandarin, Rodriguez seemed to want to expand on his own Planet Terror segment with a feature focusing on the Crazy Babysitter Twins, who are played by his niece-in-laws Electra and Elise Avellan. The two eventually made a comeback in Machete and its sequel, Machete Kills, adaptations of the fake trailer segment that played in between the two Grindhouse double features.

The Jetsons

While Rodriguez was considering these violent odes to exploitation cinema, he was also in talks to direct a live-action adaptation of the Hanna Barbera sci-fi sitcom. The film was apparently in development at Warner Bros., with a script already drafted by Adam F. Goldberg, creator of ABC’s The Goldbergs. At the same time, the director was also being offered a chance to work on Land of the Lost for Universal. Even though The Jetsons was further along in its development, it was eventually—and ironically—Land of the Lost that got a movie.

Nervewrackers

One of the more interesting of Rodriguez’s unrealized projects was an original, Blade Runner-esque science-fiction film taking place in a 2085 Mexico. The original synopsis states that the film would have centered on a member of a futuristic crimefighting unit named Joe Tezca, who discovers a sinister conspiracy by the elite class to use “Nervewrackers” to seize control of society. Rodriguez claimed he already had the script written and the costumes made with a release date slated for April 16, 2010, but the actor he had in mind to play the lead role was booked for another job.

Predators 2

Before Shane Black and Fred Dekker created their wackier, more comedic take on The Predator, Rodriguez was prepared to direct a sequel that would have been much more connected to the Predators movie he had previously produced. The filmmaker had a handful of unfocused and unrealized ideas that he was hoping to discuss and flesh out with other screenwriters, but Fox had other plans. It’s unfortunate considering that, according to Rodriguez, Predators was a test run to see if audiences were interested in seeing a Predator movie on an even bigger scale.

From Dusk Till Dawn 4

As the Weinstein Company partnered with the Weinstein brothers’ former studio, Miramax, in 2010, the two entered talks to make a fourth From Dusk Till Dawn film. It’s unclear if Robert Rodriguez would have even been connected to the entry, considering that he had no creative control over the original film’s sequels. However, he did end up developing the television series for his El Rey television network.

Fire and Ice

The live-action adaptation of legendary animator Ralph Bakshi’s high fantasy cult classic would have been Rodriguez’s tribute to his icon and friend Frank Frazetta, who collaborated with Bakshi on the original film. Sony acquired the rights to the property in 2014 with Rodriguez set to direct, but nothing as of yet has further been confirmed. Considering the groundbreaking rotoscoping technology of the original film and Rodriguez’s own penchant for advanced digital effects, it sounds like the project had the potential to be visually stunning, to say the least.

Heavy Metal

At the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, Robert Rodriguez announced that he had acquired the film rights to Heavy Metal, a magazine and animated anthology film aimed at adults, both of which featured plenty of lurid and boundary-pushing material. The filmmaker planned on working with the magazine’s current owner, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman, but also expressed interest in receiving ideas directly from fans. Now that Rodriguez owns El Rey, the project seems more likely to develop into a television show if it ever moves forward. In fact, Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots was originally pitched as a remake of Heavy Metal.

Spy Kids 5

After Spy Kids 3 utilized 3D effects and Spy Kids 4 introduced “Aroma-scope” using scratch & sniff cards, Rodriguez had planned on making the fifth installment with “5D” to allow the audience to feel physical sensations. However, the child stars of the movie, Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook, were quickly growing up while on the sets of Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World and ABC’s Speechless. As an alternative, Rodriguez produced the animated two-season television show, Spy Kids: Mission Critical for Netflix.

Machete Kills Again… In Space

The trailer that played before Machete Kills may have seemed like an over-the-top joke, but unsurprisingly for Rodriguez, the filmmaker had a legitimate interest in directing a sci-fi exploitation film based off of Danny Trejo’s action hero. In 2015, Danny Trejo stated that the movie was still happening, but considering how much of a box office bomb Machete Kills was, it’s completely unlikely.

Sin City 3

Likewise, the financial failure of Sin City: A Dame To Kill For killed the chances of a third film. Johnny Depp was being considered for the role of Wallace, a character from the Hell and Back comic book series who goes on a dangerous quest to rescue a woman from the clutches of one of the city’s crime bosses. At the Comic-Con panel for Sin City in 2014, Frank Miller told the audience members that “they better show up for number two” or the studio wouldn’t give him and Rodriguez funding for another entry—they never showed up.

Johnny Quest

At one point in 2015, Robert Rodriguez was in talks to direct a PG-13 rated adaptation of the popular 1964 adventure cartoon. Rodriguez had co-written the script with Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean writer Terry Rossio, but Warner Bros. seemed more interested in other directors like Justin Lin, Scott Derrickson, and Joe Cornish, and is currently settled on LEGO Batman director Chris McKay. Even though Rodriguez fell off the project, McKay or whoever ends up helming the project will still be referring to the original script.

Escape From New York

20th Century Fox purchased the rights to John Carpenter’s dystopian classic, Escape From New York in 2015 and still plans on reinventing the film into a franchise with Carpenter producing. At first, Rodriguez was set to direct a script written by Luther creator Neil Cross. However, Leigh Whannell of The Invisible Man fame, has been brought on to the project as another writer while Robert Rodriguez is no longer attached.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/robert-rodriguez-movies-unmade/

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