Rob Zombie's unrealized projects
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
During his career, American film director and musician Rob Zombie has worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these productions fell in development hell or were cancelled.[1][2][3][4]
The Crow: 2037
In 1997, it was reported that Zombie was to write and make his feature directorial debut with The Crow: 2037, which was intended to be the third film of The Crow (1994).[5] White Zombie covered the KC and the Sunshine Band hit "I'm Your Boogie Man" for the soundtrack of The Crow: City of Angels, and after seeing Rob Zombie's work on the video he produced for the song, Edward Pressman offered Zombie the opportunity to helm the third Crow film.[5] Had the film been made, Zombie planned to shift focus in tone from the revenge angle of the previous two entries, to a more horror-based approach. The film would've began in 2010, when a young boy and his mother are murdered on Halloween night by a Satanic priest. A year later, the boy is resurrected as the Crow. 27 years later, unaware of his past, he has become a bounty hunter on a collision course with his now all-powerful killer.[5] While producers responded favorably to Zombie's proposal for a third "The Crow" film, producers Pressman and Most ultimately decided it wasn't the best fit for a Crow film and was better served as a standalone work.[6] Zombie later described his frustration with the 18-month experience; the producers' indecisiveness eventually drove him to leave the project.[7]
2000s
Tyrannosaurus Rex/T-Rex
In 2008, it was reported that Zombie was to direct a film for Dimension Films titled either Tyrannosaurus Rex or T-Rex.[1][8][9][10] It was believed that the project was to have been based on Steve Niles and Zombie's 2004 comic book The Nail,[1] but Zombie denied this.[11] According to The Oklahoman, the film was to have been about "a washed-up boxer who gets into the world of underground fighting after he’s released from prison."[12] Zombie also described it as a crossover between Straight Time (1978) and Raging Bull (1980).[11] Zombie said in a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly that Tyrannosaurus Rex was to have been his next feature after Halloween (2007).[13] When asked about the status of the project in a 2010 interview, Zombie said, "It’s nowhere. I mean it’s not in any kind of production whatsoever."[14] According to Bloody Disgusting, the film was never made because The Weinstein Company thought it was too expensive.[1][8]
The Blob remake
In 2009, it was announced that Zombie would write, produce and direct a second remake of the 1958 film The Blob.[15][16][17][18]Variety reported in August 2009 that Zombie had started writing the screenplay.[19] Zombie's version was said to have been budgeted $30 million.[20][21][22] Zombie said of the project: "The Blob was going to happen. I was dealing with people on the movie, even though I was on the fence about doing anything that was considered a remake again. I really didn’t like the idea of that, but just as I went down the road further with the producers and the guys that owned the property, I didn’t feel good about the situation and I just walked away from it. My gut told me this was not a good place to be."[23] It was said that Zombie's version was scrapped and that Simon West replaced him for the director's chair in 2015.[24] In 2018, concept art related to what would have been Zombie's version of The Blob was publicly released.[25][26][27]
