The Monster King: Terry Gilliam’s Godzilla collaborative timeline
February-March 1993: Batman director Tim Burton and Hellraiser author Clive Barker collaborate on a script for Tristar’s proposed Godzilla movie. After the screenplay is approved, Burton is hired as director but soon leaves due to issues with Sony Entertainment CEO Peter Guber. Fortunately, the Burton-Barker script is retained while producers Cary Wood and Robert Fried look for a new director…
March 31st 1993: Brandon Lee slips on the set of the Crow and narrowly misses a fatal shot from a prop gun. After a two halt in filming everyone gets back to work.
June 1993: Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio work with Clive Barker on the last draft of Godzilla.
*July 1993: With two projects shelved and mounting frustration, Monty Python alumni Terry Gilliam meets with Wood and Fried one afternoon and accepts the director’s job on Godzilla.
October 30th 1993: Actor River Phoenix is hit by a car outside the Viper Room and is immediately rushed to a hospital. By the early hours of Halloween, Phoenix is brought to stable condition and counseled by the attending physician that he could have died of a drug overdose had he not been hospitalized earlier. Phoenix swears to go to rehab and will stay clean for the rest of his life.
December 11th 1993: Toho Studios releases Godzilla vs. Mecha Godzilla II, the 20th film in the franchise. Prior to Terry Gilliam’s coming on as director in the American adaptation, GvMGII was planned to be a standard entry in the saga, but head producer and series creator Tomoyuki Tanaka oversaw drastic changes. From a treatment by anime artist Yutaka Izubuchi, the plot has the UN building a mechanical copy of Godzilla with the intention of destroying him, not knowing that the AI they have created to operate Mecha G is uncontrollable. Meanwhile paleontologists discover an irradiated dinosaur egg on an island used by the Russians for nuclear waste disposal. They are chased by both Godzilla and Rodan to Japan, where the egg hatches into an infant Godzilla. The UN commander cajols a psychic into luring Godzilla and Rodan into a kill zone with the baby as extra bait. The two kaiju are immediately assaulted by Mecha Godzilla which kills Rodan and mortally wounds Godzilla before turning on and attacking the nearby military and civilians. While the headquarters fails to control the AI, survivors gather near the baby Godzilla and the psychic when Mecha G approaches them. Blinded and near death, Godzilla rises to save his adopted child and damages Mecha G’s power supply before being disemboweled and nearly decapitated. The survivors are quickly evacuated as the radioactivity increases but the baby Godzilla is left behind. Just as the evil machine is about to stomp the child, Godzilla blasts through its shields and explodes one of the reactors powering Mecha G. This release of radiation, coupled with the escaping life force of the elder Godzilla, jump starts the baby’s growth and the infant grows into a full-sized Godzilla after it absorbs all of the radioactivity. Mecha G comes back online just in time to blown to bits by Godzilla Junior. Junior approaches its dying surrogate parent and sheds a tear as the elder Godzilla passes. Roaring mournfully, Junior grabs hold of its fallen parent and drags it the ocean, pausing only to glare at the surviving cast before disappearing.
Fans in the theater and across the world are shocked at not only Godzilla’s “death”, but also by Toho’s announcement that the series will take a break while Tristar’s production is released. Needless to say, GvMGII is one of the most successful entries in the whole series and much praise is bestowed upon its director, Shusuke Kaneko.
March 3rd 1994: Actor John Candy is rushed to the hospital after placing an emergency call concerning severe chest pains. He will survive and begins exercising dieting regularly.
July 1st 1994: Despite a rushed production and going slightly over budget, Tristar’s Godzilla miraculously opens during Independence Day weekend and makes $30 million during the holiday break alone, eventually reaching $380 million dollars by the end of its run and beating out True Lies as the third highest-grossing film of the year.
Terry Gilliam is hailed as a visionary “madman” and the Burton-Barker-Elliot-Rossio story is highly commended. Julianne Moore is the main protagonist, a scientist hell bent on the destruction of Godzilla after it killed her husband (up and coming TV star George Clooney) while her daughter (Reese Witherspoon) rebels and sees the monster in the different light. Jeff Bridges plays cryptozoology author and hero Aaron Vaught, Brandon Lee his ill-fated assistant Marty Kenoshita, Nick Nolte the aggressive and cold military office Pike, Ron Perlman as recluse and monster attack survivor Nelson Fleer, and lastly, Akira Takarada (one of the few livings actors from the original Godzilla) plays a traumatized fisherman who witnesses one of Godzilla’s first attacks. The cast navigates the story superbly as they deal not only with the atomic monster’s rampages, but also an alien chimera’s arrival in the closing days of the year 1999.
Stan Winston out does himself on the monster effects, utilizing CGI, dynamation, and even puppets and suits despite the ill reputation of the latter in America. He and his company will nab one of the two Oscars the following year, the other going to Hans Zimmer, the composer of the film’s score.
At Tristar, plans are already being hatched for a sequel while other studios such as Universal ponder their options for the new giant monster craze…
May 27th 1995: Christopher Reeve’s horse comes to a sudden stop, throwing him off and dislocating his shoulder. Physical therapy and healing will take some months, but he will soon return to filmmaking.
*So far I have yet to find anything concrete about Terry Gilliam’s schedule following the cancellation of a Tale of Two Cities and his starting on 12 Monkeys. This vague date will remain in place until I can find out more.
Hi, yes I have decided to temporarily turn my ambitious (for me at least) idea into a collaborative timeline. The POD is early 1993 and hopefully interest will be generated to get this running for a while. Thank you.
February-March 1993: Batman director Tim Burton and Hellraiser author Clive Barker collaborate on a script for Tristar’s proposed Godzilla movie. After the screenplay is approved, Burton is hired as director but soon leaves due to issues with Sony Entertainment CEO Peter Guber. Fortunately, the Burton-Barker script is retained while producers Cary Wood and Robert Fried look for a new director…
March 31st 1993: Brandon Lee slips on the set of the Crow and narrowly misses a fatal shot from a prop gun. After a two halt in filming everyone gets back to work.
June 1993: Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio work with Clive Barker on the last draft of Godzilla.
*July 1993: With two projects shelved and mounting frustration, Monty Python alumni Terry Gilliam meets with Wood and Fried one afternoon and accepts the director’s job on Godzilla.
October 30th 1993: Actor River Phoenix is hit by a car outside the Viper Room and is immediately rushed to a hospital. By the early hours of Halloween, Phoenix is brought to stable condition and counseled by the attending physician that he could have died of a drug overdose had he not been hospitalized earlier. Phoenix swears to go to rehab and will stay clean for the rest of his life.
December 11th 1993: Toho Studios releases Godzilla vs. Mecha Godzilla II, the 20th film in the franchise. Prior to Terry Gilliam’s coming on as director in the American adaptation, GvMGII was planned to be a standard entry in the saga, but head producer and series creator Tomoyuki Tanaka oversaw drastic changes. From a treatment by anime artist Yutaka Izubuchi, the plot has the UN building a mechanical copy of Godzilla with the intention of destroying him, not knowing that the AI they have created to operate Mecha G is uncontrollable. Meanwhile paleontologists discover an irradiated dinosaur egg on an island used by the Russians for nuclear waste disposal. They are chased by both Godzilla and Rodan to Japan, where the egg hatches into an infant Godzilla. The UN commander cajols a psychic into luring Godzilla and Rodan into a kill zone with the baby as extra bait. The two kaiju are immediately assaulted by Mecha Godzilla which kills Rodan and mortally wounds Godzilla before turning on and attacking the nearby military and civilians. While the headquarters fails to control the AI, survivors gather near the baby Godzilla and the psychic when Mecha G approaches them. Blinded and near death, Godzilla rises to save his adopted child and damages Mecha G’s power supply before being disemboweled and nearly decapitated. The survivors are quickly evacuated as the radioactivity increases but the baby Godzilla is left behind. Just as the evil machine is about to stomp the child, Godzilla blasts through its shields and explodes one of the reactors powering Mecha G. This release of radiation, coupled with the escaping life force of the elder Godzilla, jump starts the baby’s growth and the infant grows into a full-sized Godzilla after it absorbs all of the radioactivity. Mecha G comes back online just in time to blown to bits by Godzilla Junior. Junior approaches its dying surrogate parent and sheds a tear as the elder Godzilla passes. Roaring mournfully, Junior grabs hold of its fallen parent and drags it the ocean, pausing only to glare at the surviving cast before disappearing.
Fans in the theater and across the world are shocked at not only Godzilla’s “death”, but also by Toho’s announcement that the series will take a break while Tristar’s production is released. Needless to say, GvMGII is one of the most successful entries in the whole series and much praise is bestowed upon its director, Shusuke Kaneko.
March 3rd 1994: Actor John Candy is rushed to the hospital after placing an emergency call concerning severe chest pains. He will survive and begins exercising dieting regularly.
July 1st 1994: Despite a rushed production and going slightly over budget, Tristar’s Godzilla miraculously opens during Independence Day weekend and makes $30 million during the holiday break alone, eventually reaching $380 million dollars by the end of its run and beating out True Lies as the third highest-grossing film of the year.
Terry Gilliam is hailed as a visionary “madman” and the Burton-Barker-Elliot-Rossio story is highly commended. Julianne Moore is the main protagonist, a scientist hell bent on the destruction of Godzilla after it killed her husband (up and coming TV star George Clooney) while her daughter (Reese Witherspoon) rebels and sees the monster in the different light. Jeff Bridges plays cryptozoology author and hero Aaron Vaught, Brandon Lee his ill-fated assistant Marty Kenoshita, Nick Nolte the aggressive and cold military office Pike, Ron Perlman as recluse and monster attack survivor Nelson Fleer, and lastly, Akira Takarada (one of the few livings actors from the original Godzilla) plays a traumatized fisherman who witnesses one of Godzilla’s first attacks. The cast navigates the story superbly as they deal not only with the atomic monster’s rampages, but also an alien chimera’s arrival in the closing days of the year 1999.
Stan Winston out does himself on the monster effects, utilizing CGI, dynamation, and even puppets and suits despite the ill reputation of the latter in America. He and his company will nab one of the two Oscars the following year, the other going to Hans Zimmer, the composer of the film’s score.
At Tristar, plans are already being hatched for a sequel while other studios such as Universal ponder their options for the new giant monster craze…
May 27th 1995: Christopher Reeve’s horse comes to a sudden stop, throwing him off and dislocating his shoulder. Physical therapy and healing will take some months, but he will soon return to filmmaking.
*So far I have yet to find anything concrete about Terry Gilliam’s schedule following the cancellation of a Tale of Two Cities and his starting on 12 Monkeys. This vague date will remain in place until I can find out more.
Hi, yes I have decided to temporarily turn my ambitious (for me at least) idea into a collaborative timeline. The POD is early 1993 and hopefully interest will be generated to get this running for a while. Thank you.
