Rob Zombie: 'Broad Street Bullies' Flyers Film Hit A Wall
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Halloween comes a bit early this year as Rob Zombie returns.
The horror director and rocker headlines Rock Allegiance at PPL Park in Chester, PA on Saturday October 10th. The event comes custom built for fall with craft beer, gourmet man food, and a lineup of music to shred your face featuring Korn, Godsmack, Five Finger Death Punch, and over 15 other bands to rage to. It's a rock reunion for many of them according to Mr. Zombie.
"I've known those guys for a long time. I mean I've known Korn---1999 I think might be the first time we toured together---so I've known those guys for however long that is" Zombie explains before a tour stop in West Virginia. "Everybody knows everybody basically. There's very few bands that you don't know."
Listen: Rob Zombie Interview
In addition to a new album due out in 2016, Zombie is also set to release his latest horror flick "31" in February, all part of a burst of creative energy from the frontman.
"Sometimes things just go in waves" says Zombie. "Every time you go to make a record you try to make it the best record you could make. It's the goal. But every once in a while it just feels more inspired than other times. And I felt like that with the last record for sure, and this record really fed off of the last record. I just listened to album this morning for the first time in many months and I think it's the best record ever."
"I felt the same thing with the movie too. When I watched the finished version of '31' I was like, this is the best one yet."
Unfortunately for Philadelphia Flyers fans, "Broad Street Bullies" is not a part of Rob Zombie's plans at the moment. The long-discussed film based on the 1970's Flyers has been put off---not by lack of passion, but by a series of hurdles in bringing the notorious team to life.
"The problem is when you don't control the material. When it's an original story that I wrote I can control everything. I don't have to answer to anybody. But something like the Philadelphia Flyers, Broad Street Bullies, something that's a true story pre-existing thing there's so much more protocol you have to go through of getting people to ok things and different steps that just really slow down the process" laments Zombie. "I work on the movie for about two years. You know developing the script, and going back and forth with the Flyers, all kinds of different things. It was just one of those things after two years I felt like we had barely...In most cases the movie would be done by that point, but in that case of the 'Broad Street Bullies' it felt like it hadn't progressed like an inch. I felt like, god this is gonna take another five years of non-stop pushing to maybe get this movie made. So that's when I was like, I got to go do something else. I'll lose my mind if I devote five or seven years to something that doesn't happen."
Zombie expressed that he would still love to do it and it may still happen, but it's the rights to real life that has pushed the film further away from seeing the screen.
"It's not necessarily because it's a sports team, it's just because it's anything" he explains. "Everything has to be ok'd, and I understand that because it's the Flyers and they to protect their team and their franchise and the NHL. Everyone in the movie is an actual person so you need the rights. We didn't even get to the point where like, they're playing the Penguins. You have to get the rights to have the Penguins in the movie. It's really a complicated thing. It was taking forever and there was no guarantee it was even going to work.
"We may go back to it one day, but it just hit a wall."
One day the right lawyer might meet Zombie and we'll finally get the Bullies movie Philadelphia deserve, but in the meantime a gang of evil clowns in next year's "31" and a show in Chester is a nice consolation.
Zombie is ready for the rock this weekend, but not quite sold on the concept of gourmet man food. "Yeah I don't know what that means. Gourmet man food sounds like - I don't know what that is - sounds like something I don't want to get involved with."
Rock Allegiance is sold out this weekend at PPL Park in Chester, PA. Look for new music from Zombie and the new film "31" next year.