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Dread Central’s Development Hell podcast made its supersized live debut at the 2025 Chattanooga Film Festival this week with a roaring, one-of-a-kind event: Godzilla is Cancelled: The Unmade Sequels. It was hosted by yours truly and featured two very exciting guests. Since the popular podcast is famous for unpacking the wildest horror projects never made, we went all in on the cult mayhem for one of the best genre festivals on earth by setting our sights on cinema’s most enormous monster.
Broadcasting live (to tape!) from the festival’s 12th annual edition, I was joined by two kaiju superfans: Dread Central’s Editor-in-Chief Mary Beth McAndrews and actor-director Graham Skipper. Together, we tackled three legendary Godzilla films that never made it to the screen … each more bizarre and fascinating than the last.
McAndrews led the deep dive into Bride of Godzilla, a jaw-dropping 1950s concept involving a feminine robot, mermaids, Hollow Earth theory, and a hydrogen bomb twist ending. Equal parts tragic and perverse, it’s a script that toes the line between bonkers sci-fi and deeply unsettling symbolism.
Skipper, making his Development Hell debut, unpacked the surreal pitch for Batman Meets Godzilla, a proposed crossover between Toho Studios and the 1966 Batman TV series. In it, the Caped Crusaders battle Godzilla with gadgets, sword fights, and even a “Godzilla mating call.” Though never produced, this fever dream of a concept remains a favorite among genre historians. Skipper, who literally wrote the book on all things Godzilla, brought his A-game to this killer live episode.
Finally, I walked the crowd through the mythic status of Bagan, an unproduced monster who nearly fought Godzilla in three different unmade films. Though Bagan never made it to the big screen, he lives on in games, fan art, and cult kaiju obsession. A true patron saint of unmade genre.
Being hosted online and in Chattanooga, Tennessee, until June 28th, the festival has long been a haven for weird, wild, and fantastic cinema. Known for embracing the fringe corners of genre storytelling, this year’s lineup includes everything from lo-fi fantasy to late-night WTF shockers. Development Hell’s live episode is a fitting addition to the chaos — a love letter to what could’ve been, and the monsters that almost were.
The full episode, Godzilla Is Cancelled: The Unmade Sequels, drops later this week on the Dread Podcast Network.
Listen to it now on the Chattanooga Film Festival’s Official YouTube Channel:
Check out the rest of the virtual programming at Chattanooga Film Festival 2025 before June 28th. The incredible genre event was recently listed as one of Dread Central’s Top 20 Best Genre Festivals On Earth.
Here’s what our panelists had to say about CFF:
“Fearless and heartfelt in its focus, this Tennessee wonder benefits from the personal and the unexpected. Not to mention a haunted base of operations and an open-armed approach to the possibilities of what genre cinema can be, it’s no surprise this was one of the first festivals to embrace virtual offerings, a practice it maintains to this day.”
The 2025 festival features its largest lineup ever and a renewed commitment to parallel online screenings.
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