Spielberg’s “Robopocalypse” Was Too Expensive

Back at the very start of the 2010s, filmmaker Steven Spielberg signed on to direct a film adaptation of Daniel H. Wilson’s novel “Robopocalypse”.

Drew Goddard (“Project Hail Mary”) 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.

Things were moving on the project – DreamWorks Pictures and 20th Century Fox were set to co-finance and distribute with pre-production and location scouting underway.

Then, in early 2013, the project was put on hold and seemingly went away as Spielberg diverted to making “Bridge of Spies” instead. Speaking with Empire (via Total Film) while promoting “Disclosure Day,” Spielberg revealed that the film’s implosion came down to one thing – finances.

This wasn’t just a costly project; this was the kind of project so expensive it could kill a studio if it failed:

“It 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’t ready to take that on.

My company, DreamWorks, financed all these films, and I did not want to bring ‘Robo’ 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’t want to pay for it, but other companies were interested in paying for it, as long as I was the director. I didn’t want to do that to anybody because I couldn’t guarantee the audience.”

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 – a challenge for an original IP. At present, there’s no indications of the project being revived in any form.