Page "The Fly (1986 film)" Paragraph 13

The new producer was Mel Brooks, who had previously worked with Cornfeld on David Lynch's film The Elephant Man, produced by Brooks ' company Brooksfilms.

Cornfeld gave the script to Brooks, who liked it but felt that a different writer was needed.

Pogue was then removed from the project and Cornfeld hired Walon Green for a rewrite, but it was felt that his draft was not a step in the right direction, so Pogue was then brought back to try and polish up the material.

At the same time, Brooks and Cornfeld were trying to find a suitable director.

Their first choice was David Cronenberg, but he was working on an adaptation of Total Recall for Dino De Laurentiis and was unable to accept.

Cornfeld decided on a young British director named Robert Bierman after seeing one of his short films.

Bierman was flown to Los Angeles to meet with Pogue, and the film was in the very early stages of preproduction when tragedy struck.

Bierman's family had been vacationing in South Africa and his daughter was killed in an accident.

Bierman boarded a plane to go to his family, and Brooks and Cornfeld waited for a month before approaching him about resuming work on the picture.

Bierman told them that he was unable to start working so soon, and Brooks told him that he would wait three months and contact him again.

At the end of the three months, Bierman told him that he could not commit to the project.

Brooks told him that he had understood and had freed him from his contract.