Independence Day director Roland Emmerich was once in place to direct Fantastic Voyage, but says he departed due to the ‘overbearing’ manner of producer James Cameron.
Writer-producer James Cameron said in April that his long-in-the-works remake of Fantastic Voyage is still happening – but we can be sure that Roland Emmerich won’t be directing it.
The Independence Day director made this abundantly clear during a San Diego Comic-Con panel, in which he revealed that he was involved in the project at one stage but left due to Cameron’s ‘overbearing’ personality.
“James Cameron is very overbearing,” Emmerich told fellow filmmaker Louis Leterrier in Collider’s Directors on Directing panel. “And so I, at one point, just gave up. Because it’s like, ‘Is it your movie or my movie?'”
As first picked up by The Hollywood Reporter, Emmerich told the Comic-Con audience that he and Cameron parted ways early in the sci-fi remake’s production.
“We were in the very beginning stages,” he recalled. “Because I said, ‘Gosh, why is he so overbearing?’ I have to say, I do my stuff, and when I can’t do my stuff, I’m totally not interested. As simple as that. So when somebody else wants to say something to me and is more powerful than me, I drop out.”
This isn’t the first time that Cameron, with his producer’s hat on, has clashed with a director. In the wake of sci-fi sequel Terminator: Dark Fate’s release, Cameron was open about his “creative battles” with director Tim Miller, adding that “The blood is still being scrubbed off the walls” following angry clashes over its edit.
Miller hasn’t directed another film since.
As for Fantastic Voyage, Cameron has had his own take on the 1966 sci-fi adventure on the boil since the late 1990s. In April, Cameron said “we plan to go ahead very soon,” and Guillermo del Toro is among the directors set to take on the task of its day-to-day making. Here’s hoping the chosen director gets on better with Cameron than Emmerich or Miller did.
