Director Roland Emmerich says he never wanted to make a ‘Godzilla’ movie, despite doing so in 1998. Emmerich is the famed "disaster movie" director of such notable hits as Stargate, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and the upcoming ‘Moonfall’. In 1998, Emmerich directed a new, Americanized take on Godzilla, which starred Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, Jean Reno, and Maria Pitillo.
The character of Godzilla, a.k.a. Gojira, was created and is owned by Toho Co., Ltd, a Japanese production house that has produced 36 films featuring the kaiju since 1954. The first American-made version of Godzilla was Emmerich's in 1998, with Warner Bros. revisiting the franchise in 2014 with a new iteration. That series has since continued with Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 2019 and last year's Godzilla vs. Kong, with more entries expected to follow.
While promoting his new film Moonfall, Emmerich (via THR) said that he "didn't want to do Godzilla" but that the studio, TriStar, "made [him] a deal, which was unheard of" to do it. However, Emmerich had some "radical" ideas about how to revamp the kaiju for a new audience, which was a stark contrast to what had been done with Toho throughout the years. If Emmerich was going to be coaxed into making a Godzilla movie, it seems his one major sticking point was that the monster had to have a decidedly different look than its Toho counterpart. Emmerich's "Hollywood Godzilla," as it would come to be known by Toho filmmakers, was ultimately more lizard-like, rather than a monstrous kaiju.
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