After Fox's management changed, chairman Barry Diller and production chief Lawrence Gordon persuaded Wolfgang Petersen to rescue the film. Petersen initially resisted, saying he was not the kind of director who could simply board a plane and finish somebody else's work, but changed his mind after reading Edward Khmara's script. He ultimately rejected virtually all of Loncraine's existing footage, arguing that Iceland still looked like Iceland and that Gossett appeared to be a human actor inside a rubber suit rather than an inhabitant of another world. The production was moved from Budapest to Munich, where Petersen had worked on Das Boot, and the film was reconstructed with enormous new sets, including a man-made lake. Gossett and Dennis Quaid stayed attached through the delays and received holding payments, while Gossett's redesigned alien makeup took months to develop. Principal photography finally resumed in the Canary Islands in December 1984 before continuing in West Germany. The restart pushed the production budget from roughly $17–18 million to $29 million before marketing drove the total above $40 million.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Wolfgang Petersen Rejected the First Cut and Rebuilt Enemy Mine from the Ground Up
Wolfgang Petersen and Enemy Mine / 1980s
After Fox's management changed, chairman Barry Diller and production chief Lawrence Gordon persuaded Wolfgang Petersen to rescue the film. Petersen initially resisted, saying he was not the kind of director who could simply board a plane and finish somebody else's work, but changed his mind after reading Edward Khmara's script. He ultimately rejected virtually all of Loncraine's existing footage, arguing that Iceland still looked like Iceland and that Gossett appeared to be a human actor inside a rubber suit rather than an inhabitant of another world. The production was moved from Budapest to Munich, where Petersen had worked on Das Boot, and the film was reconstructed with enormous new sets, including a man-made lake. Gossett and Dennis Quaid stayed attached through the delays and received holding payments, while Gossett's redesigned alien makeup took months to develop. Principal photography finally resumed in the Canary Islands in December 1984 before continuing in West Germany. The restart pushed the production budget from roughly $17–18 million to $29 million before marketing drove the total above $40 million.
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