Roland Emmerich Admits He "Didn't Want" to Make the 1998 Godzilla

Roland Emmerich is best known for helming Independence Day as well as Stargate, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and more. Emmerich also directed Godzilla (1998), which was met with harsh reviews, earning a 15% critics score and 28% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. While promoting his newest film, Moonfall, Emmerich spoke with The Hollywood Reporter and admitted he didn't want to make the Godzilla film. 

"I didn't want to do Godzilla. But they made me a deal, which was unheard of. I said, 'OK, let's go about this really radically. I'm not doing big-belly Godzilla. I'm doing him as a lizard.' That was supposed to tell everybody I can't do this movie. [Godzilla owner Toho] said, 'Oh, we'll call this the new Godzilla, the Hollywood Godzilla. Then, we can still do our fat Godzilla.' I said, 'Shit!' I was constantly working on my meteor film. It just got swept away by Godzilla, and then all of a sudden, Michael Bay came along and did it first," Emmerich explained.

We're not too surprised to learn Emmerich didn't want to make a movie about an existing property considering he recently told ComicBook.com that he prefers working on original ideas. 

"Not really," Emmerich replied when asked if he was interested in tackling a movie for Marvel, DC, or Star Wars. "Just not my thing so much. I mean, other people do it. I always try to do original movies. It's just my thing ... There's other people who can do it. I mean, there's so many great directors out there." When asked if he keeps up with the MCU, he explained, "I would say I don't see every one, but I see a lot of them." 

In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler (Academy Award-winner Halle Berry) is convinced she has the key to saving us all – but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson, Midway) and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley, Game of Thrones) believes her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.

Moonfall hits theaters on February 4th.