Trivia / The Fly II

• B-Team Sequel: Because David Cronenberg and his Production Posse had moved on to Dead Ringers, this film featured an almost entirely new creative team. The key exception was Chris Walas, who had designed the makeup and animatronic effects for the first film and was promoted to director here.
• Executive Meddling: As related by Frank Darabont in Fangoria Magazine, meddling was rampant. The screenwriters wanted to explore a number of themes, among them an exploration of what it means to be a son to a father. Those themes were dropped in favor of Squick and Gorn. Darabont says that at the first screening, Chris Walas turned to him at the film's conclusion and said, "It's not the movie I wanted to make, either." Mel Brooks reportedly remarked that, "In all my years, I have never seen such vile studio interference on a project." The worst thing? All these decisions were made by executives who hadn't even seen the first film.
• Money, Dear Boy: John Getz told Emma Westwood, author of a book-length essay about the previous film, that he reprised the role of Stathis here because "[T]hey offered me a lot of money".
• Refitted for Sequel: The interview with Seth that Martin watches as he ponders whether to continue his father's work is derived from a filmed but deleted scene from the first film (with Geena Davis's voice replaced by Saffron Henderson's, and all shots of Veronica cut). The original version of the scene can be seen on non-Vanilla Edition releases of the first film.
• Sequel in Another Medium: The Fly: Outbreak is a comic that follows what happens when Martin attempts to undo Anton Bartok's transformation into a mutant.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Geena Davis was reportedly involved with an alternate sequel in the 1990s, to be directed by her then-husband Renny Harlin, titled Flies. The script was said to feature a story where Veronica does not die in childbirth and instead gives birth to twin boys, and may have been one of the earlier original concepts for this film.
  • The first storyline speculatively planned for this film involved Veronica discovering that Seth's human mind was still active within the telepod systems, requiring her to work against Bartok Industries to try and use the telepods to restore Seth's human body.
  • Mick Garris' draft of the screenplay had Veronica convinced to go through with her pregnancy by "a religious organization" (read: cult) who would raise the child as their own; she survived the pregnancy but could not get her child back. Eventually Martin and several fellow children — all of whom were unusual in some way — escaped and hid out in Los Angeles as a makeshift family, as Martin began coming into his inherited abilities, which included being able to communicate with insects. The main elements carried over into the finished film were Martin's Rapid Aging and the idea of him being the prisoner of an organization.
  • Sam Raimi was the first choice to direct based on Evil Dead 2. He and Ted Raimi wrote a treatment that was rejected for being too wacky.
  • In The New '10s David Cronenberg himself wished to do a follow up film that was (in his words) "more of a sequel or a sidebar." Budget constraints among other things kept the film from moving forward.
  • The 2005 Special Edition DVD release was supposed to include a commentary from critic/filmmaker Drew McWeeny and DVD producer/filmmaker Charles de Lauzirika (the latter most famous for his work on the Alien Quadrilogy and Blade Runner: The Final Cut sets) but though it was recorded, it was dropped. In a bonus episode of the former's podcast '80s All Over, Drew just says that "I think we told too many stories" — suggesting that they went into too much detail about the Executive Meddling it faced.

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