The Greatest Movies you have NEVER Seen

In my many years as a mega film-geek, I have heard and read about interesting sounding projects that for one reason or another never got made. In some instances this was because the script was so far out there in terms of a commercial property that funding just couldn't be secured. In other instances it was merely a pitch by an enthusiastic producer or director that studio executives didn't get. Sometimes it seems that all the elements are in place for an awesome blockbuster experience but for one reason or another the script's time passes and the movie never gets made.

Quite often there are alternate versions of a script by another writer which are infinitely more interesting than what eventually got made. Among these are Superman Lives by Kevin Smith, Planet of the Apes by Oliver Stone, A Scanner Darkly by Terry Gilliam and the original version of Total Recall which was more like a futuristic Bourne Identity than the Schwarzenegger action vehicle it became. That however is an article for another time....

What follows is my favorite projects that as of today have never seen the inside of a cinema. I can visualise them but it breaks my heart that you will never see them. Next time you walk out of the latest bloated Hollywood remake or sequel and have that feeling that you have when you have eaten a McDonalds.Remember that they haven't run out of ideas its just that they don't want to take risks. For every shallow summer blockbuster there are about 20 interesting original ideas that never see the light of day.

The Ripping Friends

Back in the early 90's Ren and Stimpy made its debut on cable channel Nickelodeon and then a year or so later on BBC2. It was beloved by stoners everywhere for its anarchic animation and vocal performances. The creator John Kricfalusi has been pitching his idea for an animated film for a long time now to studio executives but instead of presenting them with a script he acts out whole scenes, hums the music and makes the sound effects. The Ripping Friends is about a group of super-heroes who are also scientists and don't actually have any powers but wear the costumes. They believe that super-heroes are wimps who cheat by using their powers to win their battles and they strap themselves in to a pain machine every morning so they can get used to the pain it takes to win the fight fair. They live in a complex they built called R.I.P.C.O.T (Really Impressive Prototype City of next Tuesday)with their assistant Jimmy, and are frustrated as they can't seem to break through time.  So frustrated are they that they begin to punch into space and accidentally rip through time. They find themselves back in prehistoric times and accidentally kill the first animal to climb out of the sea and onto land. The Ripping Friends must then use their abilities to save the earth by re-starting the evolutionary process.

In these days where animated superhero comedy The Incredibles can make a lot of money perhaps the time is right for The Ripping Friends to make their big screen debut. There was a short lived animated television series in 2001 which lasted 13 episodes and was toned down by fox prior to broadcast. The Lewd uncut version was then picked up for repeats on the cartoon networks 'Adult Swim'. Its seems we will never see the feature as intended and will have to watch the series DVD and wonder about this lost stoner classic.

The Silver Surfer

Now that he has made his debut to box-office success in the latest Fantastic Four film, it seems likely that we will see a Silver Surfer film at some point. Back in the early 1990's however before the super-hero boom, there were several scripts in development. Writer John Turman did about ten drafts of The Incredible Hulk which were acclaimed by the Internet spies that read them. Based on this he was given the opportunity to write The Silver Surfer screenplay. The story concerned the surfer coming to earth to scout worlds for the God-Like Galactus to devour. The surfer is attacked by the humans as an alien invader, he then signals Galactus and waits for his arrival. During his wait the Surfer experiences the nature of humanity and connects with the people. Eventually when Galactus arrives the Surfer now considers the humans his friends and must repel Galactus who is bent on devouring the earth. During Galactus's absorbing of the Earth's energy he hears music being played over a loud-speaker. Having never experienced music before Galactus becomes confused and will not destroy something that he doesn't understand. Galactus then desist's based on this and the Surfer's willingness to sacrifice his life for this new world.

The problems with this were that Galactus was such a huge scale special effect that would have cost a huge amount of the films budget. Turman had to constantly fight to keep Galactus in the movie. Subsequent drafts removed him completely and humanised the Silver Surfer who reverted back to his humanoid form of Norin Radd for most of the running time. Now that the Fantastic Four sequel has taken most of the elements of this story (Turman gets a 'story by' credit on the film), it will be interesting to see where they take the sequel. You get the feeling though that the original story in the hands of someone like Steven Spielberg could have been a sci-fi classic.

Swirlee

James Lorinz was an actor from B-Movie's like Frankenhooker and Street Trash, in film school he had an idea for an exploitation movie in the gangster genre where the main protagonist wasn't quite human. He had a vision of a man in a bathtub with half of his head melting as its made of ice-cream. Thus Swirlee was born. In 1989 Lorinz took some money and made some test footage with himself playing the main character under a 2 hour make-up job. He shot a 2 minute trailer and a 15 minute rough cut for the film featuring a young David Caruso. Surprisingly this is played completely straight with touching performances and even has a scene where Swirlee tries to kill himself by taking a hot bath. The screenplay references the thalidomide scandal of the 60's and grounds itself in reality by explaining the the ice-cream cone shaped head was caused by an anti-miscarriage drug. Whatever food the pregnant lady was craving would then be manifested in the newborn child leading to a scene where you see a pizza baby and a pickle baby.

When the film would be pitched at meetings,Lorinz would describe it as Dick Tracy and Edward Scissorhands meets Mean Streets. Sadly unimaginative studio heads couldn't see the concept and wanted to make Swirlee as more of a children's movie. They had trouble with the dark and downbeat nature of the script. The test footage has only been seen by a few people and was televised when David Caruso became famous through NYPD Blue. This could have been one of those great films you discover on late night TV and never quite forget.

Isobar

In the late 1980's the now defunct Carolco Pictures purchased a spec script by Fight Club screenwriter Jim Uhls. The script was entitled Isobar and concerned a genetic monster that was part of an artificial intelligence experiment that gets loose on a high-speed underground train in the Los Angeles of the future. Ridley Scott and artist HR Giger were connected with the project and Giger started to produce some designs. When Scott and Giger left due to creative differences with the producers Giger eventually used some of his train designs in the sci-fi horror Species. Producer Joel Silver then employed another writer to re-work the script and attached Arnold Schwarzenegger to star. The new version was set further in the future in an uninhabitable earth with the creature being an evolved humanoid that can survive outside but it must have constant adrenaline to survive so it starts to kill the passengers one by one. Independence Day director Roland Emmerich then came on board and Sylvester Stallone was attached to star. Stallone wanted re-writes to be done by his pal Steven De Souza who scripted Die Hard and Demolition Man. They were apparently not impressed that the current script played like a rip-off of Aliens. The script then went through further changes making Stallone's character a mystery customer type who secretly works for the train company and the reason for the large train being that due to a damaged ozone layer, air-travel was no longer viable. The tone changed from a sci-fi horror movie to a big-budget disaster movie with the train being the inaugural journey between New York and London.The creature was also changed to a plant based life-form that killed humans for the water in their bodies. Rick Baker, the make up genius who worked on An American Werewolf in London constructed the creature and shot test footage. Kim Basinger signed on as the female lead and James Belushi also joined the cast. It was a week to go until set construction and Carolco went bankrupt after the costly flop Cutthroat Island and filming was canceled. Years later when Carolco's assets were auctioned off the Isobar script was bought by Sony but the film remains unmade.

Although its hard to say that this would have been a sci-fi classic, its no doubt that this would have been entertaining sci-fi hokum like Emmerich's other movies Stargate and Universal Soldier. Perhaps with Stallone's recent comeback after Rocky Balboa we might see this one day come to fruition.

Roger Rabbit Two: The Toon Platoon

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was one of the biggest films of the 1980's and a major leap forward for animation when it was released. Unfortunately the combination of live action and animation has never been as successfully rendered since. The original films success led to similar lesser projects that didn't work like Cool World and Space Jam. It seemed inevitable that because of its success we should have seen a sequel but all we got were a couple of amusing fully animated shorts in front of early 90's Disney family films. Roger Rabbit Two: The Toon Platoon is widely thought to be a much better film than the original by the people who have read it. Its set in 1941 and follows Roger Rabbit through the events that lead up to America's involvement in World War 2. The film follows Roger as he grows up with his adopted human family on a farm, he doesn't realise he is a cartoon until he is 18. When he finds out he travels with human Richie Davenport to find his real mother, on his journey he meets his future wife Jessica who is embarking on a career as a radio actress. Jessica is then kidnapped by the Nazi's and forced to make propaganda radio broadcasts. Roger and Richie then must go behind enemy lines to save her. The script is supposedly structured like an old buddy comedy from the era and ends with a brilliant gag about Bugs Bunny being Roger's long lost father.

Why it didn't get made is a mystery but it is thought that it was so important to get all the elements right for this that it sat on the shelf and its moment passed. Maybe in 20 years when we get the inevitable CGI remake they will dust this off for the sequel and then we will get the true classic film that blends live action with animation.

Batman vs Superman

After the bombing of the diabolical Batman and Robin and the aborted Tim Burton revamp of Superman, Warner Bros banded around many ideas in order to get their two most prized assets back on the big screen. Among these ideas were a Frank Miller and Darren Aronofsky collaboration on Batman: Year One and an idea for a live action version of animated series Batman Beyond. However when Warner's couldn't make up its mind what to do, they briefly flirted with a script by Se7en writer Andrew Kevin Walker. Batman vs Superman would have begun five years after Bruce Wayne has retired from crime fighting following Robin's death and settled down with a wife. Superman meanwhile has been dumped by Lois Lane who could no longer deal with the difficulties of being Clark Kent's girlfriend. The Joker who was presumed dead kills Bruce Wayne's wife and so Bruce takes up the mantle of Batman again, taking pleasure in doling out justice to Gotham's low lives. Wayne blames Superman for his wife's death as he saved The Joker from a savage beating before the murder. Superman then tries to talk Bruce out of his quest for vengeance which pits them against each other. It transpires that Lex Luthor was behind the Joker's return, hoping that the Man of Steel and The Dark Knight would kill each other. The original script was dark and Warner's worryingly brought in Batman and Robin writer Akiva Goldsman to re-write it and lighten it up a bit. Warner's were excited about their script and attached Wolfgang Peterson to direct for a projected Summer 2004 release. The Internet started to rumble with casting suggestions with Jude Law or Josh Hartnett up for Superman and Colin Farrell and Christian Bale in line for Batman. However just as things started to sound like they were going forward, Warner's abandoned the idea. They were more excited about an idea for a Superman trilogy pitched by Alias and Lost creator JJ Abrams. Studio heads were at loggerheads over which direction to go in but finally they decided to go ahead with two stand alone franchises in the hope of combining them later.

It remains to be seen if this will eventually come to pass. The prospect of a Brandon Routh as Superman and Christian Bale as Batman team up is an exciting one. No doubt this would make millions at the box office, its too much of a sure thing to stay unmade.

Ronnie Rocket and One Saliva Bubble

David Lynch has always had difficulty getting his films financed despite being one of the greatest directors in modern cinema. His vision is so non-commercial that Studio's generally don't know what to make of it. You only have to watch his last three films to see that there is no way you could make such things within the Hollywood system. The one time Lynch did take the Hollywood dollar it resulted in the sci-fi mega flop Dune. Prior to the Dune disaster however and before the critically lauded The Elephant Man, Lynch had a different idea for a film in mind. After the cult success of Eraserhead, Ronnie Rocket was developed through Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope production company. The story was set in an apocalyptic American industrial wasteland where the evil Hank Bartell plagues the population with electrical disturbances and his henchmen 'The Donut Men', long coated individuals who explode when informed that their shoelaces are untied. Ronald De Arte lies in a hospital bed disfigured by some unknown event and is unable to do anything except emit strange sounds. A detective visits Ronald and leaves with three strange symbols on a scrap of paper. Ronald is then kidnapped from hospital by two renegade plastic surgeons who jolt him to life with electricity turning him into a living superconductor and Ronnie Rocket is born. Ronnie is sent to high school and has to plug himself into the mains every fifteen minutes. A band then discover Ronnie making wonderful sounds after plugging himself in and blackmail the plastic surgeons into letting them use Ronnie in their music. They become a massive success. The detective meanwhile discovers how to stay conscious during Bartell's electrical blasts and that he may be able to defeat him due to his ability to stand on one leg. The detective meets up with the plastic surgeons and their assistant and they decipher the symbols on the paper. This leads them to reverse the flow of electricity and defeat Hank Bartell. The dark city is then bathed in a glow of golden light and Ronnie sings a beautiful love song. From the synopsis you can tell that the film dealt with Lynch's obsessions with electricity and the grotesque. It was not be however as American Zoetrope went bankrupt after a string of costly flops. In 1991 however after the success of Twin Peaks, Lynch signed a three-film deal with Ciby 2000 and it looked like the film was going to go into production with Michael J Anderson (the little man from another place in Twin Peaks) in the title role. However after the first of these films, Twin Peaks:Fire Walk with Me, Lynch found that it was something that didn't interest him anymore. The screenplay for Ronnie Rocket has been available on the Internet for a long time now and it is an intriguing read. Unfortunately how it would have looked is something that will always remain in David Lynch's head.

After the success of Blue Velvet, David Lynch and Twin Peaks co-writer Mark Frost collaborated on a screwball comedy script entitled One Saliva Bubble. The madcap tale is sparked by a saliva bubble blown by a security guard which gets into the circuitry of a top secret military satellite causing a short circuit. The story then moves to Newtonville, Kansas (the lightning capital of the world). We follow a downtrodden car salesman, a professor working for a big corporation, the hitman hired to kill the professor, a simpleton called Newt Newton, a troupe of Chinese acrobats and a group of Texas businessman as they all arrive at a Kansas airport. An energy beam from the satellite strikes the earth and causes them to all switch places and much hilarity ensues as the car-salesman starts to kill his fellow co-workers and the Texas businessmen form a human pyramid. A military team is sent to deal with the crisis and the bubble in the satellite eventually pops after another beam strikes the earth. Newtonville returns to semi-normalcy. Lynch came even closer to filming this one than he did with Ronnie Rocket. The film was to be financed by Dino De Laurentiis and had the then hot property Steve Martin and Martin Short headlining the cast, they had locations scouted and were all ready to go. Then money problems put the film through endless delay's and eventually it was canceled as the De Laurentiis company went bankrupt, Lynch lost interest as he felt there wasn't enough meat to it and that pretty much anyone could have filmed the story. It is sad that this didn't get made as the prospect of Steve Martin teaming up with Martin Short on a David Lynch comedy is intriguing. It would have no doubt also brought Lynch to a whole new audience and probably would have secured financing for future projects if it was successful. The script is again widely available on the Internet, sadly the images remain unseen.

The Defective Detective

Terry Gilliam like David Lynch has always had problems getting his films made due to the unique nature of his vision. The battle with Universal over Brazil is legendary and recently Gilliam clashed with the Weinstein brothers during The Brothers Grimm. Add to this the fact that the movie he started filming prior to Grimm, Don Quixote fell apart and its a wonder the man even bothers anymore. Around the time of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam started to plan his next movie which was to star Nicholas Cage. The Defective Detective concerned a police-officer from the mid-west who came to New York to make a difference, Now middle aged he has become burnt out and brutalised by the city streets and his marriage is failing. On the verge of a nervous breakdown he investigates a little girls disappearance. The little girls bedroom leads him to a fantasy world where he must learn to be child like again as he searches for the girl and finds that his tough guy posturing does not fly in this strange new world.Eventually he must sacrifice himself for the new world which he prefers to the real one. The screenplay was written in 1990 with Fisher King co-writer Richard LaGravenese. A lot of visual ideas from Gilliam's previous films make their way into the script and the budget was projected to be on a scale of that of previous film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The film however has yet to appear.

Terry Gilliam believes this to be his most personal project yet as the main character is based on himself. Its likely that he would rather not make it than see his vision tampered with as in previous films. Its a real shame that we wont see this as Gilliam is without a doubt one of cinema's most gifted visual storytellers.

 

 

So there you have it, my personal favorite unmade projects in Hollywood. If there are any that you feel should have been mentioned here that remain unseen then please let me know. There are many more that I have heard of that have not yet appeared but one day hopefully we will see them. They include:

Robert Rodriguez's Predator 3: Homeworld, Star Trek 6: Starfleet Academy which was a prequel with a young Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr McCoy, The Waschowski Brothers Plastic Man and King Conan, Terry Gilliam's version of Watchmen from a script by Batman writer Sam Hamm, Dino the Dean Martin biopic by Martin Scorcese which was to have an incredible cast, Rob Zombie's The Crow: 2037, Quentin Tarantino's World War 2 epic Inglorious Bastards, Mad Max 4: Fury Road, William Gibson's script for Alien 3 as well as an adaptation of Neuromancer by Chris Cunningham and Biker Heaven the sequel to Easy Rider.

This article was written with the aid of the following books:

*The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies never made and Tales From Development Hell by David Hughes

* The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made by Chris Gore

* Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam

All of the above books are currently available from Amazon.com