The greatest movies never made: the Wachowskis, George A Romero, and the cannibalistic absurdism of ‘Carnivore’
After completely reinventing the landscape of mainstream cinema when The Matrix left jaws on the floor around the world in early 1999, the Wachowskis suddenly had the creative freedom and clout to write their own ticket in Hollywood.
It would be almost a decade before the siblings directed anything that wasn’t part of the sci-fi franchise, but there were plenty of opportunities to stretch their creative boundaries. The most tantalising by far also happened to be the first screenplay they’d ever written, which was dusted off as their potential first post-Matrix port of call.
The Wachowskis may have become household names for their philosophical, spiritual, and existential sci-fi epic, toeing the line between pyrotechnics and portentousness in seminal style, but Lilly and Lana were always diehard genre junkies first and foremost. That was evident in the concept of Carnivore, which almost gained new life as a meeting of diabolical minds.
The story was crafted as a low-budget exploitation flick in a similar vein to the Roger Corman B-movies they’d grown up on, and they couldn’t think of anyone better to step behind the camera and call the shots than George A Romero, a kindred spirit of sorts who’d also breathed new life into a stagnant genre when Night of the Living Dead wrote the rulebook for the zombie film in the late 1960s.
The Wachowskis had faced plenty of obstacles getting their directorial debut Bound off the ground before The Matrix, so it makes sense that nobody was willing to take a punt on Carnivore before they’d proven themselves. For one thing, Lilly’s description of it as “too weird” may have undersold the concept somewhat.
“The script was too disturbing,” she told The New York Times in the late 1990s. “We showed it to some people in Hollywood who said, ‘This is a bad idea. I can’t make this. I’m rich.'” Of course, directing one of the most influential movies of the modern era tends to open many doors that had previously been locked shut, and Carnivore briefly rose from the dead in the wake of The Matrix.
The story follows a penniless stranger who wanders into a remote town and falls for a mysterious woman before the protagonist gradually discovers that the reason why all of the food he eats tastes so strange is that the locals have been actively murdering the wealthy, chopping them into pieces, and then repurposing them as sustenance. When production company Trimark closed a deal to back Carnivore in April 1999, the month after The Matrix hit cinemas, it was surmised as “a sexy, surreal, gothic fable.”
Romero was already in talks to direct by that point, and production was tentatively scheduled to begin the same August. Unfortunately, that was about as close to the starting line as it got, and in the 20+ years since, Carnivore has never emerged as a viable concern for either the Wachowskis or any potential directors willing to take a punt on the screenplay.
It may have been an incredibly literal ‘eat the rich’ metaphor, but the Wachowskis capitalising on their newfound status by channelling the spirit of Corman and hand-selecting horror icon Romero to tackle a sexually charged and cannibalistic gothic fable about a town where the wealthiest residents are seen as nothing more than the next meal of the working classes was mouthwatering, a pun that is absolutely intended.
