John Carpenter’s Pincushion would have been a Mad Max-style action film starring Cher, but here’s why it didn’t happen. Few filmmakers had a run quite like John Carpenter from 1974 to 1988, where he produced several classics like Halloween and The Thing. There’s a noticeable gap between 1988’s They Live and 1992’s Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, where the director took a break after a relentless stretch of filmmaking, but that’s not he wasn’t developing projects during this period.
He was attached to a few movies during this gap, including The Exorcist III and Shadow Company, with the latter being an action/horror script from Shane Black and Fred Dekker about unkillable soldiers. Another was Pincushion, a post-apocalyptic screenplay that attracted industry buzz for selling during the 1988 Writers Guild strike for a tidy sum. It became a hot script for a while, with Sharon Stone and Demi Moore also attached at different points, but over 30 years later it has yet to happen.
John Carpenter was the first filmmaker attached to Pincushion, which takes place in a very Mad Max-inspired wasteland years after a new form of the plague has wiped out much of America. Most survivors hide behind the walls of fortified cities, since trying to travel anywhere else is typically suicide. The main character is Mary, a hardened courier who is often hired to transport goods between cities in her reinforced vehicle, with the story kicking into gear when she’s given three days to transport a child who has been genetically engineered as a plague cure.
The child is dubbed Pincushion and the rulers of this particular wasteland – called The Cross – will do anything to stop Mary from reaching her destination. She and the child encounter all manner of freaks and marauders while making the dangerous trek, which included lots of vehicular mayhem. The project is considered one of the great, unproduced genre screenplays, and reads like a harsh, post-apocalyptic western that would have been right up John Carpenter’s street. Cher was attached to play Mary the smuggler for his version of the film, with the singer/actress coming off her Best Actress Oscar win for Moonstruck.
It’s not uncommon for a promising project to drift away even with big names attached, and while there’s no official reason for why the Carpenter/Cher version of Pincushion didn’t happen, it seems budget may have been a reason. A post-apocalyptic action film wouldn’t be cheap, with a 1989 Chicago Tribune article noting the planned budget was “escalating” towards $20 million. Maybe that, combined with the fact Cher had never fronted an action movie or that Carpenter’s previous big-budget adventure Big Trouble In Little China underperformed, may have led to its cancellation. This is a shame, as John Carpenter’s Mad Max has a certain ring to it…
