IT WAITS (Steven R. Monroe, 2003) (not produced with Dolph)

[Gunner]

Let me guess Jox, the original script for this one never showed up anywhere, right? Man, talk about missed opportunity. Personally the original plot reminded me on not just Predator, but also on the novel Hunter by James Byron Huggins. It Waits probably wouldn't be just as good, but damn, just the thought about Dolph in a horror movie like this one was supposed to be... such a shame.

[Jox]

I wonder how good it could realistically have been though, it being another 80s script resurrected to be made on a low budget in 2003.

[Jox]

Director Steven R. Monroe briefly talks to The Movie Crypt about the tough production of the film that was ultimately made at about 25 mins in (no mention of the earlier Dolph version):
https://player.fm/series/the-movie-cryp ... n-r-monroe
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e ... 0553921495

[Gunner]

I don't know was this info mentioned around here before, but recently i found out more about background of this film, which did surprise me. Jox said in previous comment how the script was originally written in 1980's, but looks like Richard Christian Matheson and Thomas E. Szollosi actually wrote their original spec even earlier than that, sometime in the late 1970's, meaning maybe 25 or so years before it was finally made!

As it often happens with films which spent so long in development, over the years other studios and directors were attached to it. Tobe Hooper was going to direct the film at some point (if this was between late 70's and mid 80's, when he made some of his better films, i'd be all for it). And apparently, at one point it was set up at Amblin Entertainment, with Steven Spielberg attached to it, probably only as a producer (?).

And as we all know, and as Jox mentioned before, in the early 2000's it came so close to getting made, with Dolph as the lead, before that version got shut down. Although, before Dolph, another, older actor, Richard Alden, was in talks to star in the film. And after that, producer Stephen J. Cannell ended up rewriting the whole script, changing the lead to young female, adding the love story, probably making other changes due to budget etc... and is basically how the final film was made.

I still think that original idea/script sounded better, even if you could make an argument how it's more or less the same story anyway, at least based on this;

http://www.dolph-ultimate.com/dolph-in/ ... opsis.html

Wish the original Matheson and Szollosi script would show up somewhere, because finding out all this only made me more interested in it. Even in the making of documentary for the film, the original script is shown, the cover and page with original male lead, Mike (0:37 - 1:32);

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scU58VDtNSU