R.R. Confirms RIP Barbarella

Robert Rodriguez's "Barbarella" is officially no more! MTV broke the news Tuesday that the Sin City director has given up on making a remake of the 1968 sexy scfi film. The busy director was disappointed that the film would ultimately not get made and told MTV, "It was a real bummer." RR wanted to make a Heavy Metal-esque film and "Barbarella" was the perfect fit, due to financing however, that will not be happening any time soon.

"Barbarella" has been in development at Universal since 2007, but the proposed budget had grown past $80 million and the studio decided to pass. RR had looked for outside financing but was unsuccessful in finding a bid and contract that would fit his schedule. Rodriguez explained, "It came to the point where [a company from] Germany offered us a $70 million budget, which would have been by far the biggest budget I ever would have had for a movie, but I had to shoot it in Germany and post it in Germany. Nothing against Germany, but I have five kids and I was like, ‘God, I don’t know if we can do that. I don’t know if I can be away that long.'"

RR talked a bit about how far along he was in pre-production on "Barbarella" to MTV. He said, "We had all this artwork and screen tests of what it would look like. It was a really cool, R-rated, sexy—almost like that [1981 animated] movie, ‘Heavy Metal’—version of a ‘Star Wars’ movie." He continued to lamment the loss by saying, "Something that no one ever could get to see. It was gonna be really great." The director plans to one day release the artwork to show what he intended to do with the film.

What say you? Did you want to see a remake to Barbarella? Was one really necessary? Strikeback...