Brian Taylor Discusses the Fate of His Twisted Metal Movie

Director and screenwriter Brian Taylor recently commented on the fate the Twisted Metal movie project that never came to be.

Responsible for films like Crank and other fast-paced movies, Taylor signed on several years ago to bring Twisted Metal to the big screen. The film certainly had ambitions that included bringing Nicolas Cage on as Sweet Tooth and carrying a vibe reminiscent of Mad Max: Fury Road, but the plans for the PlayStation game turned movie ultimately fell apart.

Speaking to Slash Film about his new series called Happy! and other topics, Taylor was asked whether or not he still had any attachment to the idea of a Twisted Metal movie. Taylor answered by first talking about the fate of the game series that developed a "cult following" over the years.

"I wrote a Twisted Metal script that's fantastic. I was talking about this a few months ago, revisiting this idea of Twisted Metal. The main thing with Twisted Metal is the game as a franchise just sort of stalled out. There was really nothing to draft off of. You want there to be a big release of a video game and then you could graft the movie off of it. At the end of the day, Twisted Metal always had sort of a cult following. It was never that massive, like Assassin's Creed type of hit. It was that other game. The problem with that project at Sony, it became a little bit of a tweener. It felt like a movie that needed 50 or 60 million dollars to make and it didn't really seem to have the fanbase to justify that."

Once again referencing Mad Max: Fury Road, Taylor said that he'd still be thrilled to complete the project if things were to change.

"But the script itself was awesome. A lot of the set pieces in that movie were like beat for beat Mad Max: Fury Road set pieces. Maybe they wouldn't have come out as good as Mad Max. I'm not saying that, but conceptually and visually, I remember seeing Fury Road and going, "Yup, that's it. That's exactly what we were trying to do with it." Who knows? I love the script. If the climate changes or the tide changes over there and they want to make that movie, I would be so excited to do it. Twisted Metal was a script from six or seven years ago."

But until something changes, Taylor says that he's planning to see what's in store for Happy!, for now.