Before Godzilla, helmed by Roland Emmerich, premiered in theatres, there was another infamous attempt at an American Godzilla film. Helmed initially by Jan de Bont, director of Twister, the film would see Godzilla face off against The Gryphon in an epic clash. Stan Winston Studio (Jurassic Park) was brought on to design various maquettes and props, with KU Alumni Jeff Farley designing some iterations of Godzilla for the project. Sadly, de Bont wanted too high of a budget, which reportedly clashed with Sony executives, leading to his exit. Below is the November 1995 draft of the film, written by Terry Rossio & Ted Elliott.
For an extensive deep dive on the production of this film, we highly encourage you to visit SciFi Japan’s brilliant GODZILLA UNMADE series of articles.
