A remake of the 1966 science fiction adventure film Fantastic Voyage has been making its way through development hell for decades now, and for most of that time it has had James Cameron attached as a producer. At one time, Cameron was working with Roland Emmerich to develop the project, and at another time he had chosen Shawn Levy to direct the film. Along the way, David S. Goyer was hired to write the screenplay – and for one stretch of time, Goyer and Cameron were working with director Guillermo del Toro to get the new Fantastic Voyage into production. The project has never gotten that far, though. Cameron was talking about the project as recently as last year, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Now, Goyer has said that he would like to get it back on track with del Toro back at the helm.
Del Toro signed on to direct Fantastic Voyage back in 2016, but has since left the project behind. He has finally been able to make one of his longtime passion projects, Frankenstein, at Netflix – and Goyer, who also worked with del Toro on Blade II, would love it if he would circle back to Fantastic Voyage.
Goyer told Screen Rant, “Guillermo’s a good friend. We’ve worked on about five or six projects together. We were in prep on Fantastic Voyage and it was very close. A production designer was on and all of the above. While we were in prep for that, Guillermo said, ‘I’ve got this deal with Searchlight’ and ‘Do you have any scripts that could be made for $20 million?’ and I gave him a script called Antlers that we produced together. Fantastic Voyage got derailed with the-then regime at Fox, but God, it was a good one. It was such a great experience working with Guillermo and James Cameron on that, and then my experience working on that led to my working on Terminator: Dark Fate with Cameron and we got along great. I’ve known Guillermo forever. I hope one day we can figure out [how to get Fantastic Voyage made]. In fact, now, my friend Steve Asbell is running [20th Century Studios], so it occurs to me that I should call him up and say, ‘Hey, maybe we should try to resurrect this.’ I also have a Star Wars script I wrote with Guillermo that hasn’t been made, so there are definitely a few ones that have gotten away.“
Directed by Richard Fleischer from a script that was crafted by Harry Kleiner, Jerome Bixby, Otto Klement, and David Duncan, the original Fantastic Voyage had the following synopsis: The brilliant scientist Jan Benes develops a way to shrink humans, and other objects, for brief periods of time. Benes, who is working in communist Russia, is transported by the CIA to America, but is attacked en route. In order to save the scientist, who has developed a blood clot in his brain, a team of Americans in a nuclear submarine is shrunk and injected into Benes’ body. They have a finite period of time to fix the clot and get out before the miniaturization wears off. The film starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O’Brien, Donald Pleasence, Arthur O’Connell, William Redfield, Arthur Kennedy, and Jean Del Val.
Would you like to see a new take on Fantastic Voyage from Guillermo del Toro, David S. Goyer, and James Cameron? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
