Roland Emmerich Purposefully Tanked His ‘Godzilla’ Pitch But The Studio Ended Up Loving It Anyway

When you think of filmmaker Roland Emmerich, you immediately probably imagine buildings exploding and tidal waves overtaking a city. The man is known for making big-budget disaster films such as “Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” and his upcoming feature, “Moonfall.” But there’s one disaster film he wasn’t able to get made. And the reason for it is because he got stuck doing “Godzilla.”

Speaking to THR, Roland Emmerich talked about his career and his upcoming film, “Moonfall.” But he also took the time to explain why he ended up making the 1998 film, “Godzilla,” which is one of his films that didn’t resonate very much with audiences. Well, apparently, the filmmaker wasn’t trying to make “Godzilla” and purposefully tried to bomb his pitch so that he could get out of making it. 

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“I didn’t want to do ‘Godzilla. But they made me a deal, which was unheard of. I said, ‘OK, let’s go about this really radically. I’m not doing big-belly Godzilla. I’m doing him as a lizard.’ That was supposed to tell everybody I can’t do this movie. [‘Godzilla’ owner Toho] said, ‘Oh, we’ll call this the new Godzilla, the Hollywood Godzilla. Then, we can still do our fat Godzilla.’ I said, ‘Shit!’”

As we now know, 1998’s “Godzilla” ended up getting released to bad reviews and low box office. The film wouldn’t spawn any sequels and would sidetrack Emmerich’s career for a while after.

Why was Emmerich purposefully trying to tank his “Godzilla” pitch? Well, the filmmaker was developing another disaster film, where a meteor is heading to Earth (similar to “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon”) and wanted to be the first one in theaters to do it. Unfortunately, because Toho was happy with his pitch, he wasn’t able to do it.

He added, “I was constantly working on my meteor film. It just got swept away by ‘Godzilla,’ and then all of a sudden, Michael Bay came along and did it first [in ‘Armageddon’].”

All’s well that ends well, I guess, as Emmerich would continue to work on films after “Godzilla” and has returned to the disaster film genre with “Moonfall,” which is arriving in theaters on February 4.