30 YEARS ON, HOPKINS ON ARNIE/SEAGAL IN PREDATOR 2

YouTuber Howard Gorman has a new video up where he interviews the director of Predator 2, Stephen Hopkins.  He discusses various things, including almost casting Steven Seagal.

I had to go and have a meeting at his house.  Which was one of the craziest afternoons I’ve had. […] … it was a bizarre… he’s a very unusual, slightly twisted kind of guy.  In the end I couldn’t see myself doing it with him.

He was desperate to do it.  I went into his house and he took me into a room where all the walls were covered with guns.  He told me he wanted to play a CIA-psychiatrist who was also a martial arts expert who carried a gun.  He was clearly a little crazy at the time.  And I was like this is different than the way we’re going so I guess we shouldn’t do it.

Then he became really keen to do it and he threw his arm around me.

He said, ‘You know, I want you to come to my house in Santa Barbara.’  He said, ‘I’ve got a grenade launching range there, we can launch grenades together’.  I said, ‘Yeah… great, we’ll do that’.  Sorry, I’m not a fan of his.

Hopkins then goes on to reveal that the movie was originally supposed to star both Danny Glover and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The intro featured a grey-haired Dutch Schaefer playing golf, then being called away from his game as it was revealed that more extraterrestrial trouble was afoot.  Hopkins says that James Cameron put his foot down and did not want another ‘Part II’ movie competing with Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Hopkins also talks about the infamous gory cut of the movie and says that the first 700 copies distributed were actually this version of the movie, but those have been destroyed and no longer exist.  He is also not a fan of the last Predator movie, but reminds us about the pitfalls of studio interference which Shane Black possibly had to put up with.

One of the best sequels ever made.  I still remember the VHS copy being passed around school, everybody thought it was the best thing ever — the rumor of multiple Predators on screen at once had to be seen to be believed.

Hopkins seems like a cool person, unfortunately he also tells us that a 70mm restoration was abandoned this year by the studio because of the poor performance of the last movie.