David Bowie Loved This Classic Sci-Fi Movie So Much That He Tried To Buy The Rights To It
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David Bowie is now and forever will be known as one of the most influential musical artists who ever lived. He was also an actor on occasion, but one who truly appreciated film and television as an artform unto itself. Bowie was particularly fond of one of the most ambitious sci-fi movies of all time, namely, Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece "Metropolis." In fact, he even tried — and failed — to acquire the rights to it at one point.
Lang's silent German film takes place in a futuristic city divided between the working class and the city planners. Its story is set in motion when the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet, who predicts that a coming savior will solve the differences within this class war. Nearly 100 years later, the movie's legacy lives on. (H.G. Wells may've hated "Metropolis," but it's fair to say, he's in the minority.)
Bowie intended to pay homage to "Metropolis" with an album he wanted to call "Metrobolist," which he switched to "The Man Who Sold the World." In a 2022 piece published by the BFI, it's explained that when Bowie was working on his album "Diamond Dogs," he took direct inspiration from Lang's film, including the set design for that tour. As Bowie's romantic partner and muse Amanda Lear told the Miami News in 1978:
"We saw Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis,' and David was in awe of it. [...] He rented the film and ran it over and over again in his house. And that's where Diamond Dogs came from — the whole staging and album and everything, Bowie got from 'Metropolis.'"
After that tour, Bowie settled down in Berlin, which is "where 'Metropolis' and '[The Cabinet of Dr.] Caligari' had originated," as he explained in 2001.
David Bowie lost the Metropolis rights to another beloved musician
David Bowie called Berlin the "spiritual home" of expressionism in 2001, per the BFI. "It was an art form that mirrored life not by event but by mood. This was where I felt my work was going," he added.
A few years after his time in Berlin, Bowie tried to buy the rights to "Metropolis." His plan was to create a restored version with a new musical score, but he was outbid by his friend: the Eurodisco godfather Giorgio Moroder. The pair had previously collaborated on the "Cat People" remake in 1982, with Bowie creating the song "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" (arguably one of the best original songs ever written for a movie). They were even working with one another in Switzerland when it came to light that they both had similar plans.
”He was really surprised and disappointed: he told me he wanted to do the same thing,” Moroder told the New York Times in 1984. ”I had to compete with him to get the rights. Had I known how much it would finally cost, I might not have done it.”
The price tag ended up being $200,000. But Moroder also ended up getting access to new scenes, ultimately crafting an entirely new version of the film that had never been seen before. He also released his own musical remix of "Metropolis" in 1984, though it was not particularly well received.
What would Bowie's version have looked like? We can only wonder. "Mr. Robot" creator Sam Esmail's "Metropolis" TV series was scrapped in 2023, but its development only goes to show that the movie's reputation endures to this day, long after Bowie hoped to put his own stamp on it.