This Rejected Creature Design Could Have Completely Changed David Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’

Rob Bottin, the effects mastermind behind The Thing and Legend, once pitched his own creature design for David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Images of the unused sculpture are circulating again, offering another look at the monster that might have been.

The sculpture features a massive, almost bulbous head, enormous insect eyes, and a grotesque mouth that makes Bottin’s interpretation immediately recognizable as some kind of mutated fly. It’s a very different beast from the one that eventually appeared in Cronenberg’s 1986 body horror masterpiece.

According to the 2014 Profiles in History auction listing, now archived by Heritage Auctions, Bottin personally sculpted the 14-by-9-inch piece as a pitch for the job. The filmmakers ultimately selected another effects artist, leaving this oil-based clay prototype as a glimpse into Bottin’s proposed approach. The listing described that auction as its first public unveiling, so this is a rediscovered piece of horror history rather than a newly uncovered design.

Chris Walas ultimately handled the film’s creature effects, and his team’s work remains some of the greatest in horror history. Watching Jeff Goldblum deteriorate as Seth Brundle is still devastating. His body becomes increasingly diseased, asymmetrical, and inhuman, with every stage making it harder to recognize the man underneath.

Walas and Stephan Dupuis won the Academy Award for Best Makeup for The Fly. Bottin was nominated in the same category that year for Legend, alongside Peter Robb-King.

A single pitch sculpture can’t tell us how Bottin would have approached Brundle’s entire transformation. Still, seeing his interpretation alongside the creature we know is fascinating. Forty years after The Fly, we’re getting another reason to appreciate just how much imagination these artists brought to practical effects.

— Body Snatchers (@BodySnatchers79)