Welcome to an exciting journey through the world of movies that never made it to the big screen! I’m here to share some fascinating stories about films that were planned but, for various reasons, were never completed. Let’s dive into the intriguing tales of these unfinished cinematic projects.
Did you know that Martin Scorsese originally wanted the punk band The Clash to star in “Gangs of New York”? Ultimately, the roles went to Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis. Similarly, both David Lynch and David Cronenberg were considered for directing a “Star Wars” film, but it never happened. Lynch also had plans for a film called “Ronnie Rocket,” about a small man powered by electricity, but it remains unmade.
Some films were halted due to tragic circumstances. For instance, Marilyn Monroe’s “Something’s Got to Give” was left unfinished after her untimely death. The adaptation of “A Confederacy of Dunces” faced a similar fate, with actors like John Belushi and Chris Farley passing away before the film could be completed.
In 1989, Sergio Leone planned a war epic titled “Leningrad,” starring Robert De Niro, but his death prevented its production. Orson Welles had grand plans for a Disney version of “The Little Prince” and an adaptation of “Heart of Darkness,” but both projects were shelved. Welles also left behind a massive amount of footage for “Don Quixote,” a project he worked on for 30 years without completion.
Tim Burton and Kevin Smith once teamed up for “Superman Lives,” starring Nicolas Cage, but it never saw the light of day. There were also plans for various Spider-Man movies, including a James Cameron version where Spider-Man lived on an ocean liner. Other superhero films like “Plastic Man” and “The Flash” were also abandoned.
Stanley Kubrick had a vision for a film about Napoleon, but it never materialized due to budget constraints. Steven Spielberg now hopes to adapt Kubrick’s script into a miniseries. Ridley Scott considered adapting “Blood Meridian,” but decided it was best left as a novel.
Some films were made but then lost, like Quentin Tarantino’s “My Best Friend’s Birthday,” which was partially destroyed in a fire. Jerry Lewis’s “The Day the Clown Cried” was completed but never released, leaving fans curious about its content.
Many sequels were planned but never made, such as “E.T. 2: Nocturnal Fears,” “Mrs. Doubtfire 2,” and “Forrest Gump 2: Gump and Co.” Other potential sequels included “Kill Bill Volume 3” and “Beetlejuice 2: Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.”
Did you know that great white sharks can smell blood from three miles away? That’s just one of the many mind-blowing facts you can learn from exploring the world of unfinished films. Which of these movies would you have loved to see completed? Share your thoughts and keep exploring the fascinating world of cinema!
Thank you for joining this cinematic adventure. Remember, as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome!
Research one of the unfinished films mentioned in the article. Create a presentation that includes the film’s background, the reasons it was never completed, and your thoughts on how it might have impacted the film industry if it had been finished. Present your findings to the class.
Choose one of the unfinished films and write a script for a scene you imagine could have been part of the movie. Consider the film’s genre, themes, and characters. Share your script with classmates and discuss how it fits into the film’s overall narrative.
Participate in a class debate on whether unfinished films should be completed by other directors or left as they are. Prepare arguments for both sides, considering artistic integrity, potential audience interest, and the challenges of completing someone else’s vision.
Design a movie poster for one of the unfinished films. Use your creativity to capture the essence of the film’s concept, including possible cast members, a tagline, and visual elements that reflect the film’s themes. Display your poster in the classroom.
Select a director mentioned in the article and research their vision for one of the unfinished films. Discuss how their unique style and previous works might have influenced the film. Share your insights in a class discussion, highlighting what makes the director’s approach distinctive.
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript, with inappropriate language and content removed:
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Hi, I’m John Green. Welcome to my salon! I think my brother is about to get eaten by an anglerfish. This is Mental Floss on YouTube. Did you know that Martin Scorsese wanted The Clash to star in “Gangs of New York” before Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis came along? The Clash were like, “Oh, should I stay or should I go?” and then they went. Ultimately, The Clash were like, “I’m sorry, Martin Scorsese, but London is calling.” Those are both terrible jokes.
Anyway, that’s the first of many tragically unfinished films that I’m going to tell you about today. Both David Lynch and David Cronenberg were in consideration to make a “Star Wars” film, although they both claimed they were only approached and nothing further. Speaking of David Lynch, films that were never made include “Ronnie Rocket,” which was going to be his follow-up to “Eraserhead.” The film is about a 3-foot tall man who runs on electricity. In a 2013 interview, Lynch said that he’s still open to making the film but fears not being able to find the industrial-looking locations that he needs.
There are a couple of films that couldn’t be completed because a star died halfway through the shooting process, like the 1962 movie “Something’s Got to Give,” which would have starred Marilyn Monroe. Then there’s the famously cursed adaptation of the great comic novel “A Confederacy of Dunces.” John Belushi was cast in 1982 and then died; the role was given to John Candy in 1994, and then he died. The same thing happened to Chris Farley in 1997. A few years later, Will Ferrell hoped to star in the film, but it still looks like it’s not going to get made.
In 1989, Sergio Leone, the director of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” had secured $100 million in financing for his war epic “Leningrad,” which he wanted to star Robert De Niro in, but Leone died mere months before they were going to start production. Then there’s the Disney version of “The Little Prince,” which was written by none other than Orson Welles and storyboarded in the 1930s but was never made. There have been a few other Disney movies that were never made, including an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Gremlins,” a 2009 remake of “Yellow Submarine,” and “Uncle Stilin,” the story of Rumpelstiltskin.
Orson Welles also tried to adapt “Heart of Darkness” into a film before it was rejected by his studio, RKO, for being too costly. He then attempted to take on an adaptation of “The Smiler with a Knife,” starring Lucille Ball, which RKO also rejected. He then made “Citizen Kane.” When Orson Welles died, he left behind 300,000 feet of his film for “Don Quixote,” which, if you’ve ever read “Don Quixote,” is kind of hilarious but also tragic. He made several films for the sole purpose of financing “Don Quixote” and spent about 30 years trying to shoot and complete the project in locations like Mexico, Spain, and Italy, but then he died.
The 1990s saw the development of a Tim Burton-directed and Kevin Smith-written film titled “Superman Lives,” starring none other than Nicolas Cage as Superman. Luckily for our imaginations, photos of Cage as Superman have leaked online, but copyright laws prevent us from showing them to you. There were a bunch of Spider-Man movies that were never made, like a fourth film in the Tobey Maguire series, which started and then stopped production, and also a 1991 film written and directed by James Cameron in which Spider-Man lives on an ocean liner and is 8’6″ tall.
Other abandoned superhero movies that made it into various stages of production and planning include “Plastic Man,” “The Flash,” “Green Arrow,” “Dazzler,” and “Silver Surfer,” which I would still like to see. But that’s nothing compared to a 1965 “Batman versus Godzilla” movie that was never made. I mean, how can you not revive that project, Hollywood? You made the movie “Battleship”!
Bradley Cooper was supposed to play Lucifer in an adaptation of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” but the special effects budget was too large for Legendary Pictures to handle. In 2012, Francis Ford Coppola spent almost 20 years planning a science fiction film titled “Megalopolis.” He even had 30 hours of footage filmed, specifically sequences of New York pre- and post-9/11. A major part of the film’s plot involved rebuilding New York, so after 9/11, Coppola stated, “I feel as though history has come to my doorstep,” but then production got too expensive and stopped.
Before David Lynch adapted “Dune,” Alejandro Jodorowsky wanted to make the film in the 1970s, starring some people you might have heard of, like Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, and Salvador Dalí. He also wanted Pink Floyd to provide the soundtrack. Again, finances made the film impossible, which makes sense because apparently Dalí insisted on being paid $100,000 per hour. Ridley Scott was later hired to make “Dune” but had to drop out, so we got David Lynch, which is not so bad.
Mel Gibson was preparing to make an adaptation of “Fahrenheit 451” in 2006, but you may remember that there were other things going on in Mel Gibson’s life in 2006. In 1971, Stanley Kubrick wrote to a colleague, “It’s impossible to tell you what I’m going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.” We’ll never know if he was right because “Napoleon” never went into production. The budget was around $5.2 million, which is like $33 million in today’s terms, and the Romanian Army had even agreed to be in the battle scenes, but Kubrick couldn’t get the money together. He continued to work on the movie until his death in 1999, collecting one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive archives about Napoleon inside of his own house.
The saga isn’t over yet because Steven Spielberg hopes to make a miniseries from Kubrick’s script. Ridley Scott planned to adapt Cormac McCarthy’s violent novel “Blood Meridian,” but later stated, “I think it’s a really tricky one and maybe it’s something that should be left as a novel,” which, by the way, is what many hundreds of movie producers have said about my book “Looking for Alaska” in the last 10 years.
David Fincher worked for a long time on a remake of the film “Heavy Metal,” but he couldn’t get it made because it was impossible to get a studio to sign on to an R-rated cartoon. Even after famous directors agreed to join the project, like James Cameron and Zack Snyder, Fincher still couldn’t get the project going. Peter Jackson hired Neill Blomkamp to direct a movie based on the “Halo” video game series, but the movie stopped production in 2006. Jackson and his partner felt really bad for Blomkamp, so they helped him get $30 million for his passion project, which would become the Oscar-nominated “District 9.”
Moral of the story: get Peter Jackson to feel bad for you because then he’ll find you $30 million. In the 1960s, John Lennon desperately wanted to play the role of Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings.” Paul McCartney would be Frodo, Ringo Starr would be Sam, and George Harrison would be Gandalf. No, I am not making this up. Stanley Kubrick was approached to direct the movie, but J.R.R. Tolkien owned the movie rights to his book and wouldn’t allow the project to happen.
Sometimes movies do get made, but then they’re lost, which is what happened to Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 film “My Best Friend’s Birthday.” Only 36 out of 70 minutes of the film survived due to an unfortunate fire. Another example of an apparently lost film is “Uncle Tom’s Fairy Tales,” one of Richard Pryor’s first movies. For years, it was rumored that Pryor’s wife destroyed the film’s negatives, never to be seen again. But then in 2005, a Director’s Guild film retrospective featured clips from the movie, so is it gone forever? We still don’t know.
One of the biggest mysteries to film fans is “The Day the Clown Cried” from 1972. Jerry Lewis directed and starred in his first serious film about a clown entertaining children in a Nazi concentration camp. The film is finished, but Lewis never allowed it to be released for still unknown reasons. In 1977, the great Roger Ebert wrote a screenplay for “Who Killed Bambi?” which would have been similar to The Beatles films but starred The Sex Pistols. Two days into filming, production stopped due to financial problems, but Ebert posted the screenplay on his blog in 2010.
Before Martin Scorsese made the Oscar-nominated film “The Aviator,” Christopher Nolan wanted to make a Howard Hughes biopic starring Jim Carrey. After the fact, the director said, “Luckily, I managed to find another wealthy quirky character who’s orphaned at a young age.” That character was, of course, Batman. Sylvester Stallone has been trying to direct a movie about Edgar Allan Poe for a long time. He envisions Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role, but if they can’t pull that together, might I suggest that they revive the unfilmed script “Sherlock Holmes and the Vengeance of Dracula”? I mean, imagine the possibilities!
And we return to the salon to finish up with some movie sequels that were in various stages of planning and production before they were canceled, like “E.T. 2: Nocturnal Fears,” “Airplane 3,” “Gladiator 2,” “Mrs. Doubtfire 2,” “Elf 2: Buddy Saves Christmas,” “Chinatown,” which was supposed to be the start of a trilogy, “The Breakfast Club” sequel, “Forrest Gump 2: Gump and Co,” “Oil,” the sequel to “Casablanca,” “Basic Instinct 3,” and “Seriously, Dude, Where’s My Car?”
Then there’s “Kill Bill Volume 3,” “Twister 3D,” “Gremlins 3D,” “The Matrix 4,” “Napoleon Dynamite 2,” and “Beetlejuice 2: Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.” Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people. Every week, we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions. This week’s question comes from James Whiteford, who asks, “Can sharks really smell blood a mile away?” Yes, in fact, according to National Geographic, great white sharks can smell blood from 3 miles away. And that, my friends, is why you don’t swim in the ocean. Well, and also because it contains a lot of microorganisms.
You can submit your mind-blowing questions and comments. Also, let us know which of these films you would most like to have seen. Thank you for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome!
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Films – Motion pictures that are created for entertainment, artistic expression, or educational purposes, often telling a story or documenting reality. – The film adaptation of the classic novel brought the characters and settings vividly to life on the big screen.
Directors – Individuals responsible for overseeing the creative aspects of a film, play, or other performance, guiding the cast and crew to realize their artistic vision. – The director’s unique approach to storytelling transformed the play into a mesmerizing theatrical experience.
Adaptations – Works that have been modified from their original form to fit a new medium or context, such as a novel being turned into a film or play. – The adaptation of the novel into a stage play captured the essence of the original story while adding new dimensions through live performance.
Projects – Planned sets of tasks or activities undertaken to achieve a specific artistic goal, often involving collaboration among various artists and technicians. – The theater company’s latest project involved creating an immersive experience that combined dance, music, and visual art.
Cinema – The art or industry of making and showing films, often considered a powerful medium for storytelling and cultural expression. – The rise of independent cinema has allowed for more diverse voices and stories to be shared with audiences worldwide.
Unfinished – Describing a work of art or literature that has not been completed, often leaving its narrative or artistic intent open to interpretation. – The unfinished manuscript of the novel left readers speculating about the author’s intended conclusion.
Stories – Narratives, either fictional or factual, that convey events, characters, and themes, often used to entertain, educate, or inspire audiences. – The stories told through dance in the performance conveyed deep emotions without a single word being spoken.
Sequels – Works that continue the narrative of a previous story, often expanding on characters and plotlines introduced in the original. – The sequel to the popular film explored the protagonist’s journey further, delving into new challenges and adventures.
Literature – Written works, especially those considered to have artistic or intellectual value, encompassing genres such as fiction, poetry, and drama. – The study of literature in high school often includes analyzing themes and symbols in classic and contemporary works.
Dreams – Imaginary sequences or visions that occur during sleep or as aspirations, often serving as inspiration or motifs in artistic works. – The playwright used dreams as a central theme to explore the subconscious desires and fears of the characters.
