Oh what could have been.

Written and directed by Larry Cohen (The Stuff), the 1974 horror film It’s Alive centered on a mutant monster baby with an appetite for destruction, and it was remade in 2009 with a same-named film that many horror fans don’t even remember. Why, you ask? Well, it was so bad and flew so far under the radar that it rarely ever comes up in conversations about remakes.

Cohen himself even publicly decried the film, calling it “a terrible picture” that’s “beyond awful.” He added, “I would advise anybody who likes my film to avoid seeing the new enchilada.”

But in a new interview with Indiewire, Cohen revealed something really interesting about the It’s Alive remake. At one point in time, likely around the time of Slither, James Gunn tried to get the rights to the film so that he could make his own remake of It’s Alive. In hindsight, Cohen regrets that he didn’t fork them over to the man who has gone on to become a Hollywood powerhouse.

Cohen told the site:

James Gunn is a fan and a friend. He wanted to make a remake of “It’s Alive” actually but he couldn’t raise enough money to buy the rights. I’m sorry today I didn’t give them to him. But he’s beyond that now.

In the same interview, Cohen expressed his lack of interest in remakes:

I don’t like remakes. It tires me out to see that they keep announcing this and that picture is being remade. I say, Why? It was a good movie. Why can’t you come up with some original idea? Why can’t you come up with something clever and new and different? Why does everything have to be a sequel or a remake or a comic book?