David Cronenberg is one of cinema’s great auteurs, a twisted director obsessed with sex, violence and body mutilation, and whose large canon of films includes classics such as The Fly, A History Of Violence, Crash and the recently underrated Cosmopolis, which starred the world’s favorite broody vampire Robert Pattinson. Recently, though, Cronenberg opened up on some of his doom projects, granting us a delicious insight into a couple of movies that didn’t make it into production: Eastern Promises 2 & a remake of The Fly.
Speaking out on Eastern Promises 2, Cronenberg had this to say:
“It was something I really wanted to explore because it was the first time I had ever been tempted to do a sequel because I felt I wasn’t finished with the character of Nikolia, played by Viggo Mortensen, and Kirill played by Vincent Cassel.”
“I really wanted to see Nikolia go back to Russia, because one of the things I wanted in the first movie was that you see a bunch of Russians in London but you never see them in Russia. In other words you experience their exile and they are trying to recreate some of Russia within London. In the original screenplay there were some scenes in Russia and I thought it was better if we don’t see that – they long for Russia but we never see that.”
“I thought it was a very ambitious script and I wanted to do it properly and they really felt the financial restraints of the world in general. It was a really budget disagreement. “As far as I’m concerned I’m not involved anymore.”
As for the long talked about remake of his own remake of The Fly (which studios ultimately passed on), Cronenberg said:
“It wasn’t really a remake, it was more of a sequel or a sidebar. It was a meditation on fly-ness. None of the same characters or anything and, of course, with an understanding of modern technology. It was something I was very pleased with and it was a disappointment not to get it made.”
There you have it: straight from the mouth of the master. Considering Cronenberg was personally pleased with it, though, it’s a real shame it didn’t get made. Presumably audiences will have to look elsewhere to get that meditation on fly-ness they’ve been craving. You just can’t get a good meditation on fly-ness when you need it nowadays, can you? Oh, my, how times have changed.
Source: IndieWire
