Screenplay Archaeology Podcast · Fandom Limb Media

Episode 113: Godzilla 2

January 17, 2024·46 min·2 clips

Zillas lie dead every day.

Kieran Madad opens on Godzilla 2. He treats the unproduced sequel to Roland Emmerich's 1998 Godzilla like an odd archive find, then digs through the 10-page treatment with enough research-fueled energy to make the whole thing feel bigger than it is. Godzilla is supposed to be destroyed once and for all. Nick and Philippe head toward the southern hemisphere because the script ties the creature to climate, ocean currents, and the earlier unexplainable events, even if the geography needs a fair bit of hand-waving to make sense. Australia is the target. Deep in the Australian outback, they run into Anna Charlton, a beautiful, rugged, no-nonsense biologist who says she is studying dingoes and would rather not have two men wandering through her research area. She is not impressed. Philippe and Nick take her curt answers as a sign she is hiding something, so Philippe slips a tracking device into the back of her jeep. They trail her farther into the outback, lose her when their own vehicle breaks down, and end up stranded in the middle of nowhere just as a familiar roar arrives. Kieran lets the absurdity breathe, but he also keeps the plot mechanics clear enough that the treatment feels like a real alternate branch in franchise history instead of just a joke about a bad sequel title. The chase keeps tightening. He walks through the car trouble, the tracking device, the suspicion around Anna, and the way the outback setting pushes the story from detective work into monster-movie panic in a few sharp beats. By the end, the conversation shifts to where a third movie could have gone, whether Monster Island still had anything left to threaten the world, and whether aliens or other monsters might have been waiting in the wings. It never really settles down. That is the point, because the episode works best when it treats a half-formed treatment like a map of the road not taken, with all the dumb, promising, and slightly unhinged turns intact. Kieran does not oversell it. He calls it what it is, a treatment rather than a masterpiece, while still making the case that the idea is worth digging into for what it says about the franchise's possible future. The whole thing feels scrappy. Listeners who like sequel archaeology, script lore, and bluntly enthusiastic film nerdery will get the most out of it.

As heard by us

A brisk treatment dive that makes the unproduced Godzilla 2 feel oddly alive.

Kieran Madad keeps the Godzilla 2 treatment moving with a clear sense of discovery, treating a 10-page, unproduced sequel to the 1998 Roland Emmerich film as something worth digging into.

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Why you'd press play

Hear the unproduced Godzilla 2 treatment for the 1998 Roland Emmerich movie, with the hunt heading into the Australian outback.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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