It’s crazy to think that it’s been more than 30 years since the release of “El Mariachi,” the film by Robert Rodriguez that put him on the scene. And it was a quick ascension for the filmmaker, as he’d go on to direct “Desperado,” “From Dusk till Dawn,” and “The Faculty” in quick succession shortly after. By the late-‘90s, Robert Rodriguez was getting all sorts of offers to make big-budget blockbusters. And that means the filmmaker has quite a few stories about films he turned down.
Speaking in an upcoming episode of The Discourse (arriving later this week), Robert Rodriguez was talking about his upcoming film, “Hypnotic.” But elsewhere in the discussion, he talked about some of the projects he turned down early on in his career, including major superhero films and a potential sci-fi blockbuster.
You may have heard rumors that Rodriguez was attached to early versions of “X-Men” and “Superman” in the ‘90s. However, the filmmaker dispels those rumors and explained why he wasn’t interested in tackling those films decades ago.
“I was never making ‘Superman,’ I was never making ‘X-Men,’ but I read early drafts and they were early drafts,” explained Rodriguez. “Like they would require so much work to make them work that at that point you might as well be making your own thing that you can control. Why am I going to go figure this out for these guys? I never got like a golden script that was like the movie that it turned out to be, so it was easy not to make those.”
Another film he was rumored to be directing in the early 2000s was “Princess of Mars,” a film based on the “John Carter” novel series. We all know that “John Carter” would eventually get made in 2012 and become a massive bomb for Disney, but before then, Rodriguez was circling a version of the film. However, perhaps fortuitously, another major project came his way, and ‘Princess’ was put on the shelf.
“Yeah, John Carter – it was called ‘Princess of Mars,’” said the filmmaker. “Jon Favreau was going to do that at some point, too. We both were into that, because I love the [Frank] Frazetta stuff, but then ‘Sin City’ came along, so right away I was just like, ‘You know what? This is more my speed. I’m going to do this one.’ And the technology wasn’t quite there, you know. To do something like ‘Princess of Mars’ in the day, unless you’re Jim Cameron.”
Speaking of James Cameron, it’s been well-documented that Rodriguez and the “Avatar” filmmaker have been friends for decades. Well, Rodriguez shared that he remembers speaking to Cameron about “Avatar” more than a decade before the first film would go on to break records.
“When I was showing [James Cameron] ‘Desperado’ before it came out, because we’ve been friends a long time – he was showing me his script treatment for ‘Avatar,’” he said. “This is in 1995! The middle of 1995. He was writing that stuff and I didn’t know how he was going to do this stuff. He figured it out and made technology catch up to him.”
As for the future of their collaboration on “Alita: Battle Angel,” including a possible sequel, Rodriguez didn’t confirm that it was happening, but he said, “We’re always holding out hope that we can put that together because we’d love to do that.”
With all of this talk of almost-made films and possible future films, you may be forgetting that Rodriguez’s passion project, “Hypnotic,” starring Ben Affleck, is heading to theaters on May 12. And the upcoming episode of The Discourse will be arriving later this week.