Versions of The Fly that Didn’t Fly
Given that David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly is considered the director’s ultimate meditation on body horror, one of the greatest horror films ever made, and was a box office success that earned over $60 million worldwide, it’s no surprise that it keeps coming back. This week, Deadline Hollywood announced that J.D. Dillard will direct a remake written by himself and his writing partner Alex Theurer, for Fox. (The duo’s first feature is the upcoming street magic-themed gangland thriller/superhero movie Sleight.) But what about the versions of The Fly that didn’t get made? First, some background: Cronenberg’s movie is loosely based on George Langelan’s 1957 short story of the same name – about a scientist who accidentally fuses his DNA with that of a house fly, turning himself into a hideous half-insect creature – and it’s 1958 film adaptation by Kurt Neumann. That movie spawned two sequels, Return of the Fly (1959) and Curse of The Fly (1965), while Cronenberg’s resulted in one sequel, 1989’s The Fly II, a poorly-received opera in 2008 and a five-issue comic book series in 2015 titled The Fly: Outbreak, which continued the story of Brundle’s son from The Fly II.