Rob Zombie has been forced to shelve his Philadelphia Flyers movie, “The Broad Street Bullies.”
Credit: Getty Images
Strange as this (still) may sound, Rob Zombie is a real filmmaker, and a very good one at that. Thus far, horror has predictably been his forte, but it was a genre he had being planning to escape. His seventh feature was to be “The Broad Street Bullies,” a no doubt raucous chronicle of the 1972-1973 Philadelphia Flyers, when the hockey unit shed their mediocre image and became notoriously belligerent.
Now Zombie is saying he has to shelf the project, which he will return to at a later date (hopefully). Instead he’ll be turning to another horror pic. According to Nerdist, he told New Zealand 3 News:
“I’d been working on this hockey film for over two years, it took so much research and work, and I was literally sitting with someone going, ‘You know, I have this other idea…’ And I said the idea and they go, ‘We’ll make that!’ And I put together a one-line pitch, because I didn’t want to go to pitch meetings and do all that. I’d call them on the phone and go, “Here’s my idea, blah blah blah,’ and they’re like, ‘We’re in!’ So you slave over something for years and it’s still difficult, and you say some crazy thing off the top of your head and they say ‘Where do we sign?’ And that turned into a weird bidding war. And that became the next film.”
Let’s ignore our disappointment for now and say we hear ya. Films take forever to make, especially period pieces, and especially period pieces that don’t sound very studio-friendly. Still, we hope he does return to it someday, and someday soon. Here’s what he told us while he was doing press for his previous film, the underrated “The Lords of Salem”:
You said with this you wanted to try something different. Did you mean different from the “Halloween” films or just in general?
Just in general. I felt like the last group of films I did were in the same wheelhouse. I just wanted to break out of that within the structure of what we were making. I hate that phrase “horror director.” It sounds so limiting. I just want to make movies. That’s why my next film isn’t even remotely a horror or genre film.
Can you talk about it?
It’s called “The Broad Street Bullies.” It’s the true story of the Philadelphia Flyers. Which seems, wow, why would you make that? But it’s a crazy story about when they formed the team they had this idea to make it the toughest team that ever existed. And that’s how they won the championship. Literally other teams were scared to play them.
All in all it sounds like Zombie’s ready to move on. May whatever horror thing he’s concocted be as artistically fulfilling as “The Broad Street Bullies” sounds like it would have been.
Follow Matt Prigge on Twitter @mattprigge
