Ishiro Honda's original Gojira was released in Japan in 1954 and helped popularize the giant monster movie genre that has remained on the rise for seven decades. Godzilla movies are still made to this day, with Toho's latest film, Godzilla Minus One comes out in 2023, and the legendary "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" will appear in 2024. Godzilla has been part of the cinematic landscape for so long, his popularity has risen and fallen and risen again. There have been multiple "finales" in the Godzilla series, and just as many reboots. He's more malleable and more prone to reboots than James Bond.

From 1954 to 1975, Godzilla more or less followed a single continuity, and the 15 films released during this period are said to be from the Showa era. From 1975 to 1983 there would be no Godzilla films in theaters, with the series being rebooted in 1984 with the release of Koji Hashimoto's The Return of Godzilla, a direct sequel to the 1954 original that ignored all 14 sequels. The seven films released from 1984 to 1995 are said to be part of the Heisei era.

Toho has always been protective of Godzilla and will only license their favorite monster under certain circumstances. It was vital that if another company were to make a Godzilla film, it would be a high-profile film with a decent budget and impressive production values. Back in 1983, it appears that American director Steve Miner made a co-financing deal with Toho to make his own Godzilla film. Miner was best known as a slasher film director in 1983 after making Friday the 13th Part II and Friday the 13th Part III.

The miner's journey developing his own Godzilla movie, to be called Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D, is detailed in Steve Rifle's book. "Japan's Favorite Star: The Unauthorized Biography of the Big G."

The story goes that Miner was a huge Godzilla fan and worked on his own treatment for the first American-produced Godzilla film. He showed his treatment to the higher-ups at Toho and they surprisingly agreed to co-finance it. Rudar's only job was to put together a script and get an American studio to agree to finance the film the rest of the way.

The script was the easy part. Miner hired Fred Dekker to write the screenplay. Dekker's name is well known to fans of the genre, as he would go on to write Night of the Creeps, "Monster Squad" and "Robocop 3". Miner asked Dekker to write "Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D" specifically because he was not a fan of Godzilla; Miner needed someone who would pay more attention to story and structure than fan service. Dekker agreed and came up with a traditional Godzilla type of story, rebooting the franchise all over again.

Of the early days of the project, Miner said:

“I've always been a fan since childhood. After seeing it as an adult, I realized that this movie could be remade as a good movie. My original idea was to do it in 3D. I just did it"Friday the 13th in 3Dand I wanted to make a good movie in 3D, and I thought that miniatures would lend themselves to making good 3D effects. So it was a combination of trying to make a really good monster movie and doing it in 3D. I had to get the rights, so I went to Japan and made a deal with the Toho people to co-finance the development of the project, me and Toho."

Everything was set up.

In the scenario, a passing meteor triggers an automated nuclear strike, leading to an explosion in the South Pacific. The bomb appears to awaken the long-dormant undersea monster - Godzilla - which gradually descends on the United States over the course of the film. The monster, as the human characters later learn, is looking for its dead baby, rescued from the ocean by the military. The climax took place on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco.

Dekker is said to have modeled his script less on the Godzilla films and more on the then-new rise of high-end adventure films like Steven Spielberg was making at the time. Dekker, in Japan's favorite Mon Star, was quoted as saying that he wanted the film to feel like a James Bond film; something slick and exciting, it doesn't rely on a simple mess of monsters. He specifically said that he didn't want his film to be "cheesy". Miner reportedly approached Powers Boothe to appear in the film, as well as a very young Demi Moore, then a rising star best known for the monster movie Parasite. Miner even commissioned a story for "Monsters in 3-D" and hired several notable artists to map out his film and design a new version of Godzilla. David W. Allen was to provide stop-motion effects for Godzilla, and Rick Baker was hired (but did not work) on an animatronic Godzilla head.

However, the project was shelved when Miner couldn't find an American studio willing to spend the millions needed to make it. The budget was supposed to be a whopping $30 million at the time, and Miner still hadn't proven he could use that kind of budget. Then Toho began working on their 1984 film The Return of Godzilla, and interest shifted. The movie just flopped.

Miner, fortunately, continued to make interesting horror films. He moved on to House, then the excellent Warlock, Michael Myers' Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. and the giant "Lake Placid" gator. Maybe someone would let him make a Godzilla movie now.