Movies That Never Were (1 Viewer)

[DavidPla]

I thought Aronofsky DID finish the script but WB passed when the script definitely did NOT have a mainstream appeal. There's even a script review...

http://www.dc-on-film.com/batman/scr...er_yearone.php

 

[PatH]

Most of the people who've opined here have dealt with newer movies, so I'll give you a couple of old ones that cried for sequels, or more properly, the rest of the movie. Maybe someone out there can provide info as to whether there was actually talks of continuing the stories.

Northwest Passage from MGM starred Spencer Tracy and Robert Young and dealt with the search for a water route to the other side of the world in colonial days. Tracy led Rogers's Rangers, a real colonial fighting unit that did search for the trade route. It had Indian battles, massacres, a hint of cannibalism and, if I remember right, Boris Karloff as an Indian in a small but memorable role. Glorious Technicolor, too, and not on DVD. It ends with Rogers marching off to follow another lead, with much more action promised.

Captain From Castile was from Fox and deals with Cortez's invasion of Mexico. Also in Technicolor, it stars Tyrone Power as a soldier of fortune in Cortez's exhibition, Linda Darnell his love interest, and Caesar (sp?) Romero as Cortez. It ends with the column marching toward Montezuma's capital, an erupting volcano in the far distance and one of the most stirring fanfares entitled Conquest playing over the final scene. But . . . no conquest!

I still want to see these two movies that were never made, though there's tons of movies where tons of things were cut out or ignored. My brother says, for example that The Vikings (Kirk Douglas--Tony Curtis) only used about a third of the action from the novel on which it is based.

PatH

P. S. In reply to an earlier post, considering the mess GL made, for me, of the first 6 Star Wars movies (and I'm not turning this into a Star Wars thread), I don't really need to see Eps. 7-9.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

I heard that story, except the version I heard had it as a live-action film, and it was supposed to be LOTR.

 

[Bill McA]

I've read the script for David Lynch's pet project Ronnie Rocket.
It was supposed to star Twin Peaks' Man from Another Place, Michael J. Anderson as Ronnie

Lynch's One Saliva Bubble starring Steve Martin

 

[Andrew-V]

I remember hearing awhile back that the Cameron script for Avatar was online. Does anyone have a link?

 

[TheLongshot]

I've heard that most of them have been pulled. I don't know the truth of it.

I think I have a copy sitting somewhere on a CD, but I have no idea where right now...

Jason

 

[TonyD]

i read a book about 25 years ago called "the Second Son"

was a very good book about a modern coming of another son of god.

not a religious movie at all just a story of, what if it happened now.

right on the book it says soo to be a major motion picture.
it never happened.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038...264107?ie=UTF8

 

[Paul Arnette]

Speaking of movies about God that never were, wasn't Brad Pitt once attached to an end-of-the-world, apocalypse movied titled God?

I don't remember much more about it than that. I swear that I read about it in Entertainment Weekly or some similar magazine while waiting for a haircut. This was before 2000. Actually, I'm starting to think I imagined it...

 

[Yee-Ming]

Ender's Game: still stuck in development hell. In the past I would've thought the predominance of null-gravity in the Battle School sequences would have made production near-impossible, but modern CGI should be able to do it; the bigger problem, I guess though, is casting: where are they going to find a child-actor that can play Ender, assuming they stick to his age as per the book? And is it even PC to have portray such a young boy doing the things he did? (trying not to spoil it for anyone who's never read the book, apologies if this gives away too much).

Good call on Star Wars VII, VIII & IX. But was there really ever any hint of X, XI and XII? I thought it was always described as three main chunks, of which the middle part (what we now know as the OT) was the most likely to get made, and when Lucas fleshed out the story, he found that the middle part itself warranted a trilogy of films; since his "big finish" of destroying the Death Star was only supposed to be right at the end of that middle part, he had to bring it forward to give IV a satisfactory conclusion, but once he was able to make V and VI, he had to "do it again" at the end of VI.

Edit: Can't believe I forgot about Foundation. I guess Ender's Game first came to mind because I read it recently and am currently reading its sequel.

 

[BrettGallman]

Originally, the Star Wars saga was going to be twelve parts, then nine, then six. All depending on when Lucas was talking about the issue, really.

 

[Andy Sheets]

I've come across a few books like that. I recently got a used copy of George RR Martin's Nightflyers, which has the "Soon to be a major motion picture!" text on the cover. If it ever came out, I must have missed it.

Edit: Ah, checked IMDB and it was turned into a film, albeit a poorly reviewed, low budget one.

 

[TheLongshot]

Actually, Battlefield: Earth had that tag for years.

Then, they actually did decide to make a movie of it...

Jason

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Conan The King - (aka. King Conan, Conan: Crown of Iron). The rights to the Conan character are always in a state of flux, but part 3 was intended to reclaim the Hyperborian warlord from the horrible cheese that was Conan The Destroyer, John Millius was tapped to direct, Oliver Stone would again co-write (supposedly a King Lear-esque tale of power, greed, and betray from Conan's children), and Arnold was more than happy to return to wearing a bearskin loincloth.

But since Crom does not smile upon sequels......

*C3 possibly scraped for animated Conan: Red Nails
*Warner loses right to Paradox Entertainment
*Wachowski brothers back-out of producing. Cite problems with Millius.
*Boaz Yakin (Dirty Dancing : Havana Nights, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: texas Blood Money) tapped as writer/director of Conan The Barbarian remake.
*Arnold Schwarzenegger gets new job as governor or something... severley limits movie-acting time.
*Ralf Moeller (Conan The Adventurer) and "Triple H" (wrestling) both possibly signed for sequel.
*Wachowski brothers mend ties with Millius and return as producers. Inspired by The Lord Of The Rings, they are planning a more epic-scale war film (possibly involving Stone's lizardmen from his first draft for CTB?)than Millius's smaller Shakespearian script.

So...reakky, who the hell knows what is going on.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

I guess I could mention Star Trek: Ground War[/i], as a TV series talked about during the height of Deep Space Nine's ratings. Each season would follow one army (instead of the spaceships) from a famous Trek-war, followed the next season by the opposing military. The first two seasons being the Federation/Klingon war, then seasons 3& 4 being the Cardassian/Klingon war.

 

[Britton]

Richard Donner's Superman II. I know that they are assembling a new version for dvd, but it won't be exactly what should have been in the theaters in 1980.

 

[Andy Sheets]

It's actually not all that complicated. Warner never really lost the rights to Paradox - Paradox is working with Warner. A lot of the Milius stuff never got beyond script/pitch stage, along with the casting suggestions of Triple H and the Rock (WB supposedly came close to distributing Milius's film as a low-budget direct-to-dvd sequel that would have been financed from Turkey). The Wachowskis are long gone. Yakin was just signed as a writer (director is undetermined right now) a few weeks ago. Oh, and Red Nails is currently stuck because they ran out of money.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

How'd that work out?

 

[Med]

I'd loved to have seen Cronenberg's version of Total Recall starring Richard Dreyfuss! What a different movie experience that would have been (no offence Arnie & Mr Verhoeven).

 

[Ray_R]

Some of these are inspired from wikipedia.

The Dig - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dig

Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End - There was a book I read, it was from England which I bought from amazon.com which listed other uncompleted film projects. It had details about it and alot of concept art. Or was it for Rendezvous with Rama?

Total Recall II - Originally was supposed to use the story from Minority Report but altered to fit the Total Recall "universe".

Return to the Planet of the Apes - Directed by James Cameron or Ridley Scott and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (there were other possibilities, it's in one of my old Cinescape issues) to be a sequel of sorts or maybe a closer adaptation of the novel. I'm unsure about the full details.

 

[Yee-Ming]

It might be Rendezvous With Rama, also stuck in development hell, and IIRC had Morgan Freeman attached to it. I don't remember much talk about Childhood's End; both seem to be so incredibly non-Hollywood in their stories that it's no wonder neither has been made yet.