Probe-Bats

At the end of last year, I reported on the sale of Stan Winston Studio’s maquette for Jan de Bont’s unmade American Godzilla movie. Now another maquette from the “lost” film has been sold on eBay.

Probe-Bat 2

Probe-Bat 1

This is one of the Probe-Bats, or “Bat Minions”, associated with the Gryphon, Godzilla Might-Have-Been opponent in the abandoned version of the film. The eBay description went like this:

Never finished as a full-size character, this is the henchman for the Griffon [sic] Beast that was the nemesis in an early version of the Godzilla story. The script changed as drastically as the look of the lead monster did when he became the terrorizer, rather than the protector of Earth as he was in the original storyline. Made of solid resin and hand painted at Stan Winston Studio, this is a maquette of a character that would have been just larger than human scale if it had been realized on film. Measures 45 in. long x 35 in. wide.

Link (limited life, as the auction ended a few days ago)

David Russell’s storyboard drawings (available on Todd Tennant’s American Godzilla ’94 Project site) illustrated what the Bats would have been getting up to:

David Russell probe bat

This entry was posted in Daikaiju, Giant Monsters, Godzilla, The Lost. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Probe-Bats

  1. Adam Buxton says:

    was this available on ebay – and if so is this a production model??

    i would be grateful for a answer

  2. Backbrain says:

    Yes, Adam, this was available on eBay at one stage — along with a number of other Winston Studio items. Winston’s maquette for Godzilla was there too. Quite expensive.

    Both had been created as part of pre-production on the film that didn’t happen.

  3. daniel says:

    a few seconds prior to posting this message here i finished reading the script for this unmade film. one can only regret that it was never made, since it would have been so much more interesting and better plotted than the version produced in 1998, that seemed to rip off so many plot elements from jurassic park,among other things…

    now that models from that production are sold, all hope is lost, apparently…

  4. Backbrain says:

    Well, Daniel, you can always read Todd Tennant’s graphic novel version of the unmade film, which starts here:
    http://americankaiju.kaijuphile.com/american-godzilla/ag94novelpage1.shtml

  5. alex says:

    dude is this real cuz i dont think u made ti i think that u found it on the internet

  6. alex says:

    was this a production model? i need to know cuz i had an idea that if it was we could totally get it sold for like a thousand bucks

  7. Robert Hood says:

    Yes, Alex, the model and the drawings are both real, but of course the images came off the internet. As the article says they were available for sale on eBay well over a year ago now — and that’s where I got the images. Someone bought them for much more than a thousand bucks.

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