smell of death about it. Actually, if you looked up, you could see celluloid buzzards circling as we lay there dying on the distributor's floor. One amusing note: It was funny, when we were met at the airport by the teamsters they'd have a sign in front of them saying DETOX, and all these actors like Kris Kristofferson, Tom Berenger and myself looked like we were going into rehab rather than a film shoot. During the original filming of D-Tox in 1999, Sylvester Stallone became attached to star in another Universal produced film, an action horror entitled Fatalis. Written by novelist Jeff Rovin in 1998 and sold to Universal for over a million dollars, the script for the film concerned a huge pack of saber-toothed tigers who come back to life after an El Niño hurricane awakens them from being frozen inside an ancient sinkhole for thousands of years. They start attacking any humans they run into while moving down the mountains and through the woods before eventually attacking Los Angeles. Rovin, who wrote the novelization of Stallone's Cliffhanger (1993) and his biography, wrote Fatalis with Stallone in mind for the lead role of an anthropologist who, along with a female reporter he befriends, wants to capture the tigers alive as they are our last link with the past, however the local sheriff wants to destroy them. The film went into pre-production by 2000, but following the huge failure of D-Tox and Stallone's other films, Universal ceased production and it went unproduced, though Rovin later turned his script into very successful novel of the same name. Rovin did the same with Vespers, another cancelled action-horror film from around the same time, which would have focused on giant bats that attack New York City. When asked in 2021 about the chances of Fatalis being produced twenty years later, Rovin revealed that Stallone still owns the rights to the original story, and he suspects it will not be produced. Release Home media The DVD release of the film includes eight deleted scenes as bonus feature, but the original ending is not included. Theatrical trailers show several deleted and alternate scenes, including some that are not included in DVD, like more nudity by Dina Meyer during her shower scene. Reception Critical response The film has an approval rating of 18% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 3.5/10.