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Robert Rodriguez Explains Why His Barbarella is Officially Dead

by Alex Billington
May 5, 2009
Source: MTV

Of all the projects that Robert Rodriguez has in the works, I will admit that Barbarella is the one that I am probably the least excited about. His re-imagining of the 1968 classic has been in the works for years, but back in 2007 Rodriguez hit a snag with Universal, and the studio backed out due to budget concerns. The following year, Rose McGowan claimed that it was still on track, but obviously nothing happened. A few weeks ago, Rodriguez revealed his plans for the next few years and they don't include Barbarella. Now MTV has confirmed once and for all that Rodriguez's Barbarella is official dead. Let's find out what happened.

Rodriguez explains: "It came to the point where [a company from] Germany offered us a $70 million budget, which would have been by far the biggest budget I ever would have had for a movie... But I had to shoot it in Germany and post it in Germany. Nothing against Germany, but I have five kids and I was like, 'God, I don't know if we can do that. I don't know if I can be away that long.'" So that was that? "It was a real bummer," he says. "We had all this artwork and screen tests of what it would look like. It was a really cool, R-rated, sexy—almost like that [1981 animated] movie, Heavy Metal—version of a Star Wars movie."

Whoa, wait a minute, he just mentioned Heavy Metal, Star Wars, Barbarella, and sexy, all in the same sentence. Maybe I should've been more interested in this? But alas, the project is now dead. Back in 2007 it seemed the problem was that the budget was actually pushing $100M (not just $70M) and Rodriguez insisted on using Rose McGowan, even though Universal didn't want her. Obviously that deal fell apart as well. Honestly, I'm not that heartbroken. Sure, it would've been cool, but Rodriguez is now doing a sci-fi called Nerveracker, and he's rebooting Predator, and he may one day do Sin City 2, so who cares?

In case you may be wondering why Rodriguez even considering doing Barbarella, well, we'll let him explain himself. "After Sin City, I was looking through all my comic collection to see, 'Well, what else might I make?' The only other thing that I had tons of were Heavy Metal magazines. I said, 'I wanna make a Heavy Metal movie!' And Barbarella fit the bill because you could have everything in that movie." Maybe one day?

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