{"id":387195,"date":"2026-04-11T19:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/387195\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T19:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:46:11","slug":"spielbergs-robopocalypse-was-too-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/387195\/","title":{"rendered":"Spielberg’s “Robopocalypse” Was Too Expensive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

Back at the very start of the 2010s, filmmaker Steven Spielberg signed on to direct a film adaptation of Daniel H. Wilson\u2019s novel \u201cRobopocalypse\u201d.<\/p>\n

Drew Goddard (\u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d) was to pen the script for the adaptation, a cautionary tale exploring the fate of the human race and a desperate last stand against a robot uprising.<\/p>\n

Things were moving on the project \u2013 DreamWorks Pictures and 20th Century Fox were set to co-finance and distribute with pre-production and location scouting underway. <\/p>\n

Then, in early 2013, the project was put on hold and seemingly went away as Spielberg diverted to making \u201cBridge of Spies\u201d instead. Speaking with Empire<\/a> (via Total Film<\/a>) while promoting \u201cDisclosure Day,\u201d Spielberg revealed that the film\u2019s implosion came down to one thing \u2013 finances.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t just a costly project; this was the kind of project so expensive it could kill a studio if it failed:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was gargantuan. It was a company-ender. It would have ended a whole studio that would have never made its money back. So, I literally decided it was going to be the most expensive movie I ever directed, and I wasn\u2019t ready to take that on.<\/p>\n

My company, DreamWorks, financed all these films, and I did not want to bring \u2018Robo\u2019 into my own company, because it would have just been too expensive for us to produce. And then I took it out to other companies. I didn\u2019t want to pay for it, but other companies were interested in paying for it, as long as I was the director. I didn\u2019t want to do that to anybody because I couldn\u2019t guarantee the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Hemsworth, Anne Hathaway, and Ben Whishaw were linked to the project at the time, with speculation being that the film would require a budget of at least $200 million, possibly much higher \u2013 a challenge for an original IP. At present, there\u2019s no indications of the project being revived in any form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Universal Pictures Back at the very start of the 2010s, filmmaker Steven Spielberg signed on to direct a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[63746,146,85,46,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-387195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-bigslider","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}