‘There was an old lady who swallowed a fly’: A ‘Cronenfeld’ Film

Abstract

This chapter examines how the idea to remake The Fly reached David Cronenberg. Producer Stuart Cornfeld was introduced to the idea of remaking The Fly by way of playwright/screenwriter Charles Edward ‘Chuck’ Pogue. Cornfeld admits David Cronenberg was his first choice as director for The Fly. However, Cronenberg would not fully enter the picture until further down the track, when Cronenberg's relationship with Dino De Laurentiis on Total Recall had fallen apart. Cronenberg, who had worked with De Laurentiis previously on The Dead Zone (1983), reportedly undertook 13 rewrites of Total Recall but was still unable to reach a point of compromise on the project that satisfied all parties involved. But The Fly story is interesting, even before it became a David Cronenberg film.