Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has been around for thirty years now, pivoting from his tiny indie “El Mariachi” to a whole host of films, including “Desperado,” “From Dusk til Dawn,” “The Faculty,” “Spy Kids,” “Sin City,” “Machete” and more.
For a period there, he was also offered a whole bunch of significant movie blockbusters to direct, something he didn’t ever really get around to doing until 2019 with James Cameron’s long-gestating “Alita: Battle Angel” project.
His newest film is “Hypnotic,” a reality-bending sci-fi action thriller starring Ben Affleck, Alice Braga and J.D. Pardo, which releases in cinemas this Friday.
Speaking with The Discourse over on The Playlist whilst out promoting the film, the discussion turned to projects he turned down early on in his career.
Back in the 1990s, he was rumored to be attached to an early version of “X-Men” and a new “Superman,” rumors he has now shot down and explained that he had no interest in those films at the time:
“I was never making ‘Superman,’ I was never making ‘X-Men,’ but I read early drafts, and they were early drafts. 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.”
One project he confirms he was linked to in the early 2000s was “Princess of Mars,” a film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” novel series. That film was eventually made in 2012 with Andrew Stanton helming what remains one of Disney’s most costly flops, though appreciation for the film itself has grown with time.
Rodriguez says he was looking into it until another project got his attention – a project that became one of his signature films:
“Yeah, John Carter – it was called ‘Princess of Mars’. 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.”
Cameron, of course, he’s been friends with for decades. Rodriguez says that Cameron showed him a script treatment for “Avatar” back in 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”.
Rodriguez didn’t confirm if an “Alita” sequel was happening, saying it mostly just remains a dream for now: “We’re always holding out hope that we can put that together because we’d love to do that.”
Rodriguez also has the “Spy Kids: Armageddon” reboot coming in the latter part of this year with Zachary Levi, Gina Rodriguez, Billy Magnussen and D.J. Cotrona starring.
