“Barry said at one point, ‘I’m really kind of concerned about this big flying machine. Wilson recounted the following meeting at Jon Peters’ home in Los Angeles:

In the end, though, Loveless’s mechanical spider got back into the movie. Luckily, Sonnenfeld was able to veto the “stealth bomber” idea, which Wilson and Maddock had transformed into some sort of steampunk flying doohickey in their second draft. Have you seen them? They’re really scary.’ It was Hollywood at its best.”

We dealt mostly with intermediaries in his company from then on, and we got notes like, ‘We don’t like the giant walking spider machine, we want it to be a stealth bomber.’ And we said, ‘You don’t mean a modern stealth bomber, do you?’ And they said, ‘Yes, we do. “We just kept working on the same draft, we were still trying to put it together and we only met with Jon one other time. “As time went on, the notes started getting crazier and crazier,” Wilson added. This would eventually led to the inclusion of Gordon’s nitro-cycle. My partner Brent was in town, so he had rush meetings with Jon Peters, who, and I kid you not, did not know that it was a Western.”Īs the story goes, Peters was confused as to why there were horses in the script and requested that a motorcycle replace the equestrian elements in the story. We’re getting notes, mostly from a woman in Jon Peters’ office, and that’s when things started to get pretty crazy.

“We were like, ‘Oh my God! That’s exciting!’ Poor and Joel and Bill-whose idea this was-got slowly pushed aside as heavyweight producers came on like Jon Peters and heavyweight directors like Barry. “Suddenly, this was a big steamroller project,” Wilson said.

Wild wild west