Jan de Bont, 80, has only directed five movies in his career, including “Speed” and “Twister.” The problem is that the other three were “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” “The Haunting” and, his last one, 2003’s “Lara Croft: Cradle of Life.”
De Bont tells Variety that, despite the 20 year hiatus from filmmaking, he’s been trying to get projects going, but without much luck.
He has a passion project, titled “Riders in the Sky,” about Indian tribes in the Midwest, that's been in development hell for many years (“It was a beautiful story, very imaginative”). It went as far as locations having already been scouted and the sets designed. It got canceled.
Then there’s de Bont’s “Godzilla.” the sets were also ready for that project, but then Sony Pictures suddenly decided against it happening because it was “too expensive” and “Roland Emmerich claimed that his movie was going to be much cheaper.” According to de Bont …
[What Emmerich said] was a lie — it became much more expensive than my budget. But when minds change at the studio, you can’t really do anything about it. It’s just a pity because we had a really great script — it would’ve been great. I’m a huge fan of “Godzilla” — to me, [“Godzilla Minus One”] is one of the best movies ever. h
With that said, the filmmaker still believes in getting one final film greenlit by a studio, and, given his age, he’s hoping it happens soon:
There’s still some ideas that I have that make for a really exciting movie. I mean, one more would be good.
It should be noted that, before he became a director, de Bont was a cinematographer, having worked on numerous blockbusters and genre films, including “Cujo”, “Flesh and Blood,” “Die Hard”, “The Hunt for Red October”, and “Basic Instinct”.