As a follow-up to our recent discussions of Rose McGowan as a leading lady and Robert Rodriguez’s cinematic intentions, MTV news has discovered that the planned remake of Barbarella is dead:

MTV News learned exclusively during a conversation with the director to promote the Blu-ray version of “Sin City” that his “Barbarella” is officially dead.

The film had been in development for years. Back in 2007, Universal Pictures was set to make the picture with Rose McGowan taking over the lead role from original star Jane Fonda. But the budget was said to have swelled past $80 million dollars and Universal balked. Rodriguez went in search of alternate financing.

“It came to the point where [a company from] Germany offered us a $70 million budget, which would have been by far the biggest budget I ever would have had for a movie,” Rodriguez told MTV News. “But I had to shoot it in Germany and post it in Germany. Nothing against Germany, but I have five kids and I was like, ‘God, I don’t know if we can do that. I don’t know if I can be away that long.’”

Rodriguez reluctantly said no and moved on to other projects. “It was a real bummer,” he admitted. “We had all this artwork and screen tests of what it would look like. It was a really cool, R-rated, sexy — almost like that [1981 animated] movie, ‘Heavy Metal’ — version of a ‘Star Wars’ movie. Something that no one ever could get to see. It was gonna be really great.”

Well, it might have been “really great,” but how in outer space could this film ever make money? The ridiculous notion of a $70-$80 million budget for a remake of a 1968 film, which was made on a $9 million budget but only saw a gross revenue of $613,285, is a cinematic death wish.