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Movie projects usually take years to reach the screen, but TOTAL RECALL’s 16 years in development hell is beyond unusual.  

The 1990 sci-fi action adventure, directed by Paul Verhoeven (ROBOCOP) from a screenplay by Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon and Gary Goldman, starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s based on Philip K. Dick’s 1966 short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” where a construction worker gets a memory implant about being a secret agent on Mars.

It wasn’t until 1974 that the 23 page story’s movie rights were acquired for $1,000 by Shusett, who then worked with O’Bannon to turn it into TOTAL RECALL. The project bounced around Hollywood for the next 16 years with some 40 screenplay drafts, seven directors and various stars.  

Shusett & O’Bannon followed up by writing the 1979 sci-fi horror film ALIEN for 20th Century-Fox, which got them a development deal at Disney where they almost got TOTAL made for $20M. But that fell apart because of third act problems with the screenplay.

TOTAL’s next stop was producer Dino De Laurentiis’s DEG (De Laurentiis Entertainment Group) in 1982. Five years later, it was moving towards production there, but unfortunately DEG was also moving — into bankruptcy.

In 1984 DEG signed David Cronenberg (THE FLY) to direct TOTAL, but he also ran into third act snags. Over the next year, Cronenberg wrote 12 more drafts — but he and Shusett didn’t agree about TOTAL’s tone.

What Shusett & DEG wanted was a kind of “RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK GOES TO MARS.” Cronenberg preferred a more serious approach like BLADE RUNNER (1982), which was based on Dick’s 1968 novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” That plus the casting of Richard Dreyfuss as a non-action lead prompted Cronenberg’s exit. A few years later, De Laurentiis agreed to let Cronenberg make TOTAL as he originally had in mind, but Cronenberg didn’t want to battle again with Shusett.

De Laurentiis wanted to hold down TOTAL’s budget after his $40M 1984 debacle DUNE. Scrapping the Mars scenes would have helped, but Shusett & O’Bannon refused, which put TOTAL back in the Hollywood deep freeze.

Schwarzenegger had liked TOTAL since the mid-’80s, but DEG didn’t think he was right to play Quaid. When DEG was winding down, Schwarzenegger got Carolco Pictures, for whom he’d starred in the 1988 action crime comedy RED HEAT, to buy TOTAL for $3M, including  development expenses.

After buying most of DEG’s assets in April 1989, Carolco green lighted TOTAL starring Schwarzenegger with a then huge budget of $65M. Carolco got a blockbuster return on its investment when TOTAL opened  June 1, 1990 via TriStar and did $261.3M worldwide.