Hi Mark!

I wonder what the uncompleted Sergio Leone Film on the german siege of Leningrad in World War 2 would have looked like.

I heard he was about to start shooting when he died in 1989.



By the way: i really enjoy your great show on friday with simon. There is nothing alike in german radio.



Lorenz

I for one really like Superman 2, any fan of film let allone superman will know that Richard Donner was up to direct it, got half way through production, then the project was taken over by Richard lester.

Terry Gilliam's attempted adaptation of Watchmen. I really wonder what Terry would have done with it, as I am a big fan of Watchmen, and Alan Moore in general.

I would have loved to see Steven Spielberg's 'Night Skies'. Whilst I know that it set in motion E.T and Poltergeist, the story behind its production and design has made this a film I wish had been made.

Yeah I agree with Mark about the Jodorowsky's version of Dune (it was literally an epic film with length of 14 hours) and with Lorenz about the Leone's siege of Leningrad film. Also you will know Mark the Kubrick was going to do Aryan Papers and wrote the first draft of the screenplay. He then decided not to do it as Spielberg made Schindler's list.



I would have like to seen Neuromancer (my favourite book) done by Chris Cummingham. William Gibson said that Cummingham was the only person that had a right vision for it. It's now in pre-production with Vincenzo Natali, who is probably next best thing.

JJ Abrams' Dark Tower

Hitchcock also wanted to make a movie Kaleidoscope told from the perspective of a serial killer and shot in a more Nouvelle Vague manner than his usual studio-based epics but was turned down by the censors as it was apparently too 'dark'.

Most films that never were are that way because the Director died - David Lean planned to make Nostromo, Leone's Lenningrad - the opening sequence described by Christopher Frayling sounds amazing and as great as Spielberg's AI is, Kubrick's possible version still haunts me.

I think Scorsese had the idea when he made Key to Reserva, these films can be made, as the original director would have made them, but with a new artist's touch keeping it serious and more than just an homage - well at least that's a better idea than a remake of Straw Dogs :/

I may be mad for saying this... but Alien³ was great. The visuals, the creature, the characters, the pacing, the underlying religious themes came together in a great somber and dark pile of allegory. Too bad for Newt though.

I disagree with the Jodorowski project, because the way I heard it, he would've made some ridiculous changes to the plot and characters that a fan of the book such as myself would have hated.

For me the greatest movie that never made it is Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of Lovecraft's book, "At the mountains of madness". I can only imagine the sheer terror we would've felt as the characters tread on in the Antarctic wasteland, being watched by an ancient and undying evil, and being chased by it through caves, temples and ruins as daylight is fading. The fact that the project fell through is a damn shame.

I would like to submit all the great film ideas I've had while daydreaming when I should of been working. Such as Sc-Fi version of Moby Dick, set on an alien ocean planet. It might not win any awards but it would bring in the royalities everytime it was repeated on the SF Channel.

Slightly off topic, but for me the best film about films which died in development hell is Don Hertzfelt's satirical short "Rejected".

It's a 9 minute mockup showreel charting animator Hertzfelt's fictionalised decent into madness whilst attempting to churn out cash-cow commercials for "the Family Learning Channel" and "Johnson and Mills corporation".

Every commercial on the reel is either too bizarre or too gruesome to show on primetime TV and all are rejected.

The film leaves it nicely ambiguous whether Hertzfelt is a misunderstood artist rebelling against his corporate sponsors or whether he has simply lost the plot.

I was disapointed that Guillermo del Toro dropped out of making the Hobbit as I think the Hobbit is less epic and more about the details than the Rings trilogy. I think Del Toro would have brought something fresh to the franchise, and from his previous work on Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy 2 he seemed the perfect choice to bring it to the big screen.

Got to be Flamingos Forever, the sequel John Waters was going to make for Pink Flamingos. Although it would have been lovely to see the characters back on screen, it would never have been the same if they replaced the irreplaceable Edith Massey.

It's not exactly moved into modern myth, but I really would have liked to see Darren Aronofsky's Batman, as good as Nolan's are. When reboot time inevitably comes, hopefully they'll be able to tempt him into giving us his take; as opposed to any light hearted Justice League team up nonsense.

Dear Mark



Personally I would have loved to have seen Frank Darabont’s original script for Indiana Jones 4: Indiana Jones and the City of Gods. It is alleged that both Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford found Darabont’s Whip-cracking, Shia Labeouf free script to be on a par with the quality of Raiders of the Lost Ark: the first Indiana Jones adventure. However George Lucas, being the creative black hole that he is, managed to muck up yet another genre franchise by rejecting Darabont’s script and opting to film a far inferior script devoid of thrills and Indy’s classic heroism. Having been an avid fan of the original trilogy since childhood I was sorely disappointed at what should have been Indy’s swan song.

Bravo, Doc! As much as I'm a fan of Fincher's Alien 3 (check out the far-superior 2003 Special Edition if you haven't already), Vincent Ward's incipient vision for the film would've been something else... 'The Name Of The Rose' in space, as someone once said. *wink*



Story-wise, Ward's vision was pretty much carried over to the Fincher version - Ripley crash-lands, encounters a devout all-male population, does battle with a quadrupedal alien and sacrifices herself in flames at the end - however, budgetary concerns on 20th Century Fox's part (dressed up as logic concerns: 'a wooden planet?') brought about the scrapping of its visually stunning sheathed-in-wood spherical satellite-cathedral setting.



An intriguing mythical angle was sadly not carried over, at least in the theatrical cut, either; Ripley saw the creature for what it was - a creature - whereas the monks (that became prisoners in the Fincher version) saw it as a harbinger of doom, the Devil, even. What might've been, eh!



I wonder what George Lucas' Flash Gordon would've been like, too...

As an avid James Bond fan, I think it’s a shame that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service didn’t get the revenge sequel that it deserved. This is because his wife of a few hours is gunned down by Blofeld and the next novel, You Only Live Twice, sees a broken, suicidal Bond in Japan getting revenge and ending with a shocking cliff-hanger in which he loses his memory. This would have made for a truly unique and darkly atmospheric Bond film, a welcome change from the old formula.



Unfortunately they made the film You Only Live Twice before OHMSS, so instead of following it up with a gritty revenge story, we had a silly adaptation of Diamonds Are Forever and Sean Connery in a moon buggy. (Shamefully, I still enjoyed it)

Yeah I would have loved to have seen Vincent Wards Alien 3 with his tree planet. When he explained the film in the extras for the DVD it sounded like a really good film. Shame the studio handled the film badly all round.



I think for me it would have to be Christopher Nolan's Mr. Hughes which he described himself as the best thing he had ever written with Jim Carrey all set as Howard Hughes.

They pulled the plug on it due to The Aviator coming out which I loved but Nolan's version wouldn't have been set in a 30 year odd period but his whole like from birth to death.

He went on to do Batman Begins instead which didn't do too bad for him :P



Another one is one based on the computer game HALO with a script that was written by Alex Garland for a million dollars fee and was gonna have Neill Blomkamp directing with Peter Jackson producing.



Neill Blomkamp even did some Halo shorts for WETA and Microsoft which gives some idea to what the film might have looked like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyKSaXsg-PE



I have also read the script online and it would have been a cracking blockbuster as well. It would be nice to see a videogame film be good for once, but this one would have been Batman Begins standard to me going from Garland's script.

I think all the comments posted before mine some up the unmade films that still get me worked up; Sergio Leone's WWII film with DeNiro, Kubrick's Napoleon, and Gilliam's Don Quixote being massive disappointments that should have been masterpieces. Any way you can help Gilliam with his funding Mark, go and pester and shout at some people ;) you might work wonders!?



However, on a positive note i'd just like to say that for a while it seemed that no one was brave enough to back Paul Thomas Anderson's new film 'The Master' (currently in post-prod) he was saved by a millionaire. Darren Aronofsky has suffered for years trying to get projects off the ground and has now had his dream realised with $130mill coming from Paramount to film his 'Noah'.



At least modern master filmmakers such as PT Anderson and Aronofky are doing ok so far, especially since Aronofky seemed set to be the new Gilliam for some time.

For me, the greatest movie never made isn't a specific title, but I would like to see the as-yet-unmade "good videogame movie". The problem so far hasn't been that video games can't make good movies, it's just that so far (for the most part) the wrong games have been picked. The reason the Resident Evil movies seem like cheap Romero knock-offs is that the original games were as well. Same goes for Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Postal, and the rest of the franchises Uwe Boll has got his hands on; even if Boll weren't the director, most of these games would be little better than cheap shlock as movies. Silent Hill has the potential to be a good movie, too bad that hasn't yet been the case.



The problem is finding a game with a unique and workable story that still has the financial success to warrant a studio backing. There's surely a good movie to be made out of Heavy Rain, Shadow of the Colossus, or the Metroid and Zelda franchises.

#19 - BioShock + Sir Ridley Scott = good video game movie!

David Lean had planned to direct - Nostromo, a fictious story of a revolution in a South American republic during the turn of 20th Century. For half decade he struggled to adapt Joseph Conrad's dense novel into a screenplay and he died weeks before the filming was due to begin.



I would loved to have seen another David Lean film before died, he has made so many of my favourite films and he seems to have been completely forgotten.

Another that has just come to mind for me is Ridley Scott doing Dune. After Jodorowsky's attempt fell through, Scott was hired to direct it, but he dropped of it to do Blade Runner.

There was talk at one point of Aronofsky making a film based on the Lone Wolf & Cub manga. It's one of my favourite pieces of literature, so it would either have been terrific or a total disaster in my mind. I had heard that he wanted to convert it into a western rather than the samurai epic that it is.



It would also have been really interesting to see the film version of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash which never materialized. I think it is a much more cinematic novel than the above-mentioned Neuromancer, with potential for more spectacular visuals and action sequences while still having some interesting ideas, although both novels suffer from having been so influential on sci-fi films that they would most likely end up appearing dated and unoriginal to a modern day audience.



There's also Jeff Noon's novel Vurt, which is perhaps odd enough not to suffer from that problem.

The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass - sequels to The Golden Compass. I think written His Dark Materials starts a little shakily - it's roaring by the end of Northern Lights but the beginning half of the book isn't that thrilling. I had HIGH hopes that the second and third films would be AMAZING. I met Hussein Amini last year who had the screenplay for The Subtle Knife written ready to go - with its multiple windows between worlds, and invisible spectres hiding in every furrow, it could have been spec(tre)acular! Really dumb money stuff prevented it from happening with New Line selling the foreign rights on the basis that it didn't do megabucks in the US - but it went on to earn a ton - just not for them, and they have the rights to the sequels. We're left with the first film, that omits the final scenes of the book (which are truly engaging and would have been visually stunning) because they were saving them for the second film that never happened. Frustrating.

I would have loved it if Nic Roeg had stayed on board and directed Flash Gordon rather than drop out and be replaced by Mike Hodges...

Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' is said to be the 'unfilmable' graphic novel, and yet Zack Snyder proved us wrong in 2009. And yet, he simply filmed it. Snyder's version is deeply flawed, but what about the versions that were supposed to happen before it?



Paul Greengrass was linked to Watchmen before even Bourne Supremacy, with Paddy Considine rumoured to be playing the role of Rorschach. (Something I don't think would have worked out.) And yet this film never came to fruition, maybe for the benefit of us all as we could have missed out on United 93, a truly brilliant film.



And of course you mentioned Gilliam being attached to Don Quixote and never being successful, but even he was attached to Watchmen back in the early nineties with Robin Williams being rumoured for the role of Rorschach, which personally I would have loved to have seen. However, how Gilliam would have managed to make Watchmen back in the early nineties is beyond me. I think technically, back then, it wouldn't have been possible.



Even with Snyder's huge budget and fan-boy attitude, I continue to believe that Watchmen, my favourite graphic novel of all time, remains 'unfilmable'.

@ScottFromTO

Well so far it's not what they have tried to adapt as the Resident Evil movie is very different to the first game, it's how they have treated them.

The reason comic book films have done so well is that they have hired people to write or direct them who at least have somekind of understanding of the medium.

Halo for example which had a good script is because Garland is a bit of a gamer, you can even see that in his novel "The Beach" with a couple of games mentioned and even "Game Over" at the end of the book which is explained in great detail earlier in the book.



But Resident Evil for example would actually be a good film if they did it right.



Bioshock which was mentioned on here was very nearly a film to be made by Gore Verbinski and the reason it wasn't made is because it would have cost over 100 million dollars due to under water sets etc having to be built...he clearly never played the game if he didn't realise it was gonna cost more than 100 million to make and I'm glad that fell apart as I don't understand why so many people turn to him.

@ Liquidcow



Yeah that is my own fear with the film of Neuromancer is that everyone is gonna think it's the a sci-fi fan boy trying to do his favourite sci-fi films. Hopefully though Natali will do a good job, certainly looks much more promising than when Joesph Kahn (with Hayden "Anakin Skywalker" Christensen as Case) were doing it

Harmony Korine's Fight Harm

ScottFromTO, I think you might be waiting a long time, in fact you WILL be waiting forever. A game can't be made into a good film because the people who write games are just re-working their favourite film they've seen 500 times. All game storylines are weak facsimiles of films. Even quality games that focus on story (like Heavy Rain which you mentioned) and may seem like an original story started in the mind of the writer as a film and was then worked into a game, to then re-work it back to a cohesive film with a real plot and character is just not possible.



Greatest film never made? Gilliam's Don Quixote?

1) If I'm correct Terry Gilliam was always intended by J.K Rowling to film the Harry Potter books, but the studio decided instead to opt for Chris Columbus who is shall we say, more methodical in his film-making. I have always been interested in how the films would have looked under the artistic eye of Terry Gilliam.



2) Also Kubrick was requested by The Beatles to do an adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings starring them in lead roles, to which he replied that it to John Lennon it was 'unfilmable'. Probably not the only reason, but it still would have interesting to see.



3) The numerous other directors attached to Watchmen may have made a more interesting film: Terry Gilliam (again), Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky and David Hayter, whose script was described by Alan Moore as 'the closest [he] could imagine anyone getting to Watchmen'

I agree with LSJShez. I would have loved to have seen what Aronofsky would have done with Batman but, then again, the version we got was pretty good anyway. Sticking with the same director I think his involvement with the next Wolverine film was pretty much all it had going for it until he dropped out. [Reverse Psychology] I guess Aronofsky will never make a comic book adaptation.

*replied to John Lennon that it was 'unfilmable' - This page really needs an editing button :)

I think it's a crying shame that David Lean's revisionist 'mutiny on the bounty' film never got made.The art work for the film in Kevin Brownlow's biography looks amazing and the story reappraises Bligh and Christian.But Lean's romantic view of Fletcher Christian jarred with Robert Bolt's screenplay and he was unwilling to compromise on the scale of the film causing budget projections to soar.But had it made to the screen dare i say it, it could have been better than 'Lawrence of Arabia'.



Jeff Dense *16 on the subject of Bond when they made 'You only live twice' and 'live and let die' if they'ed stay faithful to the books they could've been great films.

I would of loved anyone else but Michael Bay to of done Transformers.I was fan of them when I was young and he messed it up something chronic. I would of liked to see David Fincher's or Chris Nolan's version or a director who could of taken a story which is at heart silly and turned it in to one about people. Not a 2hr boxing match + the CGI lets down when on that long.

I know some have already mentioned the wooden monastery version of Alien 3 but for a short while it was rumour they were going to do something like the Alien: Earth Wars graphic novel kind of story, which is basically about the annihilation of humanity on Earth. It seemed a logic next step to me. Horror film, action film, disaster movie. It had the added bonus of not having to kill Newt or Hicks off.

BTW... what happened to the Stainless Steel Rat film that was in development?

The ultra violent and superb Cormac McCarthy novel Blood Meridian has been cited over the years and appears on IMDB may be happening in 2015. Would love to see the likes of Scorcese, Ridley Scott or Terence Malick have a go at this.

Ivan the Terrible part 3, supposedly stopped in production by Stalin Himself. If part 2 hadn't been so poorly received by the Soviet Regime and Sergei Eisenstein hadn't died in 1948 we could have had more of his experiments with colour film, more of Prokofiev's music and a lot more of Nikolay Cherkasov's central performance as Tsar Ivan IV slides from suspicion and paranoia into full-on berserker mode...

I'm not very up on what films never made it to screen so I've had a quick look and found that they were going to made a squeal to 'Who framed Roger Rabbit'. A film I adored as a child and looking back on it now still holds up. With the amount of rubbish squeals and re-realises around recently (insert your worst here) something that was that good and successfully it seems strange that it was not made.

@Nostromo, I am too a hardcore fan of Alien 3 workprint, I firstly think it's the best and most interesting Alien film (i've always HATED Aliens) and it's much more it tone with the original than the vile Cameron sequel. It's almost like Brute Force is space or something, it's very noir which Fincher was going for.



Anyhow on to unmade films...



The Man Who Killed Quixote (I personally think it would have been his masterpiece, I can't watch the doc it's too depressing. Mark, last I heard Terry had said he had got sick of it and have put on hold for the timing for adaptation of the book Mr. Vertigo... plot.... below)

"Story of Walt the Wonder Boy, looking back late in life at his youthful fame performing "anti gravitational feats" (he can levitate) in a travelling show run by the mysterious Master Yehudi. Fame and fortune await, but there are also Depression-era dark times ahead, courtesy of the Mob, the Klan, and Uncle Slim..."



I've also heard Terry is working on another stab at his on infamously nevermade film The Defective Detective.



Terry's Watchmen was so close to be made, he announced it publicly a few times, Joel Silver who was the producer offered him it again but he turned it down in the 90s.



Another film that I would have loved to have seen would have been a adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk book "Survivor", which got cancelled after 9/11 cause it deals with a plane hijacking.



Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness which was going to being his first film but he eventually settle on Citizen Kane and the rest is history.



and there is of course the filmed but never released Jerry Lewis' Day the Clown Died which hopefully is released after he dies, it sounds astonishingly good or bad.

David Lynch also had the desire to do a biopic about Marilyn Monroe but the project never got of the ground. Perhaps he used some of them ideas in Mulholland Dr?

Orson Welles's final film, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which may yet get a release.

Kenneth Lonnergan's MARGARET is finally being released!!!!!!



A great public access show in NYC called The Cinefiles did an episode on this very topic.

https://www.youtube.com/user/cinefiles#p/search/0/LQ_s6GZQTSo

That's easy. 'At the Mountains of Madness', Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's masterful psycho-pulp-horror short story. At one point it looked like he was going to be given $200M to create an R-rated genre epic and the prospect of that amount of money being spent with a great imagination like Del Toro's with absolutely no restrictions was just mouth watering for all fantasy, horror and SF fans. Unfortunately the spineless producers backed out fearing its hardcore violence and themes of cosmic dread wouldn't bring in an audience. How wrong they are!

Frank Darabont's Indiana Jones 4. I'm sure it would have been allot better and Shia Leblargh free.

Well despite the wonderful story of it's making plus some great bit parts and striking imagery: Apocalypse Now always sat rather oddly for me. It seemed rather blatant and perhaps was so much of what you expected it to be that it ultimately fell short of the huge expectations of the audience?



Either way I sorely missed Heart Of Darkness (as directed by Orson Welles).



I found Brando to be too obvious as Kurtz - and he was clearly just yanking Coppola's chain for his own pleasure.



I think Welles as Kurtz would have been a brilliant reveal just like his Harry Lime was and Welles would have made you marvel at Kurtz in the way we are supposed to and did in the book.



Coppola probably thought Brando just being there would have done the job but it didn't. Sheen tries hard to make us believe that there's something to empathize with but Brando was just being himself for a million dollar paycheck.

I would nominate Herzog's Fitzcarraldo with Klaus Kinski and Mick Jagger; surely such a production would've given rise to a yarn or two? Totally agree about Kubrick's Napoleon, but would I also be right in thinking that he spent quite a while courting the notoriously reclusive Patrick Suskind for the rights to adapt Perfume: The Story of a Murderer? At the very least, that would surely have been interesting and, in my opinion, been much more satisfying than it's eventual adaptation.



Ade, Kilmarnock



PS, Re. above and "At The Mountains Of Madness" - agreed, and still my fingers are crossed.

If you watch the "special edition" of Alien 3 from the bizarrely-named "Quadrilogy" box set (what's wrong with the word "Tetralogy"?) you will see that Fincher's vision for the film was far more interesting and coherent than what eventually emerged in cinemas - an example of us actually getting to see a "greatest film never made". I'm sorry, but I think that Vincent Ward's wooden planet version sounds crap.



Then there are the potentially great films that were never completed: "I, Claudius" and the version of "Cleopatra" that fell victim to the shutdown spring to mind. In a similar, but not quite the same, way, the original version of Woody Allen's "September" might make for an interesting comparison with the one released.



As for the great films that were never made at all, though, well, I would love to have seen Terry Gilliam's take on "Watchmen" and had J K Rowling got her way, the same director would have landed the Harry Potter gig - another missed opportunity. And what about Kubrick's take on "AI"... Ah! So little space, so long a wish list...

The Exorcist by Stanley Kubrick. :D



Paul Greengrass's Watchmen comes to mind which would've updated the story to modern times and been less of a slave to the book. Such an approach allows a film to stand on it's on, instead of just being a shallow recreation of a superior (unfilmable) source material, like Zack Snyder's film.

I wouldn't have wanted to see it necessarily but what might have become of the 007 franchise if Tarantino had directed Pierce Brosnan in Casino Royale?

I would love to see Gilliam's take on the Columbus Potter films (but not from Cuaron on down, with the possible exception of Newell's film). His visual imagination and a studio budget would be a perfect match for Rowling's vision. I hope and believe that he would consult Rowling on story details though.



Also, I don't think Alien 3 being terrible is to blame on Fincher, I think If you look at the quality of his output since then that's pretty evident. He had a great deal of conflict with the producers, being untrusting of the first time director, which explains his perfectionism since, I think if they gave him total control, his version would at least be interesting and not look like a compromised film.

Perhaps the greatest film never made was (is?) Kubrick's Napoleon on which he worked for a number of years even though MGM wouldn't fund it. The scale would have been immense and akin to one of Napoleon's campaigns! I WOULD have wanted to see that!

As it happens, last night I watched the fascinating doco "The Epic That Never Was", about the 1937 version of "I Claudius", directed by Joseph von Sternberg and starring Charles Laughton. Some scenes did get made and Laughton is spellbinding as the stuttering, apparently foolish man who becomes emperor.



However, as with many of these things, if the Laughton movie had been made would we have Derek Jacobi's masterful TV Claudius? If Ramsay had made The Lovely Bones, would she have made ...Kevin? Sometimes our idealised version of what might have been should be put aside in favour of the reality of what we have.

I would have loved to have seen Kubrick's Napoleon



I think Scorsese at one point wanted to make the Odyssey, which would have been amazing



Ridley Scott's Blood Meridien would have been interesting



Scorsese, Spielberg and Tarantino all expressed interest in doing James Bond. It's a great pity none of them took the reins

Definetly David Leans version of Nostromo, this and Catcher on the Rye would be two books considered impossible to film, having said that a Christopher Nolan Nostromo and a Von Trier Catcher on the Rye would make compelling viewing........

The on again, off again Wicker Man sequel has always had me intrigued. But the Nic Cage remake has put me right off and just want it left alone!

Being a Kurosawa enthusiast I would have loved to have seen what the legendary director would have done with 'After the Rain' which he intended to make until he died in 1998 - at which point it was taken up by his protege Takashi Koizumi. Even though Koizumi's film is still very good, to see Kurosawa turn his hand once again to samurai culture and themes of claustrophobia and paranoia would have been a delight.

The only film I can think of that wasn't made that I would liked to have seen... Jim Cameron's Spider-Man which got caught up in lawsuits for so long he finally gave up and moved on. He had said that he was more excited about working on that than any other film that he had ever worked on.



Okay, this is two (and recent), but I also would have liked to have seen Arranofsky making the Robocop remake. Robocop is one of my favorite films and I really don't care to see the remake now without Arronofsky.



All right three... I would have liked to have seen what Joe Dante would have done with The Mummy. I had seen props that he had used in his pitch for it (in Fangoria magazine) and was impressed. Instead they went with Stephen Sommers' version (who I had liked up until The Mummy). Although it was successful, I still find it to have been one of the worst examples of commerce over art I have ever watched. And I still despise that film.



Okay. Two more... both involving the Holocaust. I would have liked to have seen the Scorsese version of Schindler's List (before he passed it off to Spielberg). No happy endings there, I think. The Mel Gibson Holocaust film would have been profoundly interesting, too. Even with all of his baggage, Gibson still makes great movies.



But that clip of WNTTAK... Wow, that looks pretentious and stagey... I'll reserve judgement until I see the rest of it, though.

The Coens were going to adapt James "Deliverance" Dickey's novel To the White Sea with Brad Pitt, essentially an adventure story about a soldier escaping a ruined Tokyo during WWII. The script can be read online and has no dialogue after the first 30 or so pages, it could have been extraordinary and reinvigorated the silent movie tradition years before the likes of The Artist.



But as always happens with films that attempt to challenge audiences, the studio got cold feet and pulled out.

David Lynch's One Saliva Bubble... also he was going to make a sitcom about 3 cows that thought they were people.



Andrew Kevin Walker wrote a great exploitation flick called Red, White, Black and Blue, it got tossed around hollywood a bit but never got a green light.



Also Kubrick's Napoleon.

I would love to see David Fincher's finished and approved version of Alien 3 the version eventually released is an enjoyable for because of the visuals and the moments of gore. Having seen the designs and read the basic storyline for the wooden planet concept I would like to have seen it.

Another Alien film in the series I would like to have seen would have Alien Resurrection directed by Danny Boyle with Joss Whedon creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer script which would'nt have featured ripley but at the last minute the studio changed their mind and said they wanted ripley back interestingly though David Giler & Walter Hill opposed Resurrection as "cough" they thought it would ruin the franchise.



Returning back to Kubrick I would like to have seen him make his version of A.I. and of course Aryan Papers but cancelled as Spielberg had Schindler's List ready for release before Kubrick had even started filming.



Another David Lynch entry how about Lynch's version of Return Of The Jedi which he turned down to film Dune, for me the original and special edition of the film look like the most exspensive TV movie ever made and just does'nt have that edge that New Hope and Empire Strikes Back had and when 3D version is released it will be the most exspencive TV converted to 3D. So it would have been interesting to see what Lynch would have done with the film.



For those including the good Dr who don't like Schindlers List do you think Martin Scorsese(who turned it down because he thought a jewish director should direct it)would have made the film better?



David Lean was originally going to direct Empire Of The Sun but he ended up giving it to spielberg I would like to have seen what Lean the master of epic would have done with the film.

Edward Ford by Lemm Dobbs sounded good too. written in the 70's I think, very dialogue heavy. I like Lemm Dobbs (angry screenwriter)

Dream of the Bovine



David Lynch... Co-written with Robert Engels in 1994, this was to be comedy about three people who once were cows. They still behave like cows, but look like humans. Peter Deming described it as an "existential Marx Brothers."

My pick would have to be Kubrick's planned version of Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum' (Eco refused permission, but regretted it after SK's death). Alternatively, John Boorman intended to film Lord of the Rings but when he couldn't get permission from the Tolkien estate he made Excalibur instead.

I would have been very interested to see an adaptation of Nick Cave's script for the proposed sequel to Ridley Scott's Gladiator, which apparently featured Russell Crowe's Maximus being reincarnated at various points in history such as World War 2 and eventually working in the present day Pentagon.



Another one, which could be more accurately described as 'As-yet-unmade' is King Of The Gypsies, a biopic of bare-knuckle boxer Bartley Gorman, which was announced a few years ago as a project to be directed by Shane Meadows and starring Paddy Considine, with a script written by the pair.



It sounds like Gorman led a fascinating life (he had his first fight aged 12 and remained unbeaten until his retirement aged 47) but the last I heard of it, there was some difficulty obtaining the rights to his story. Meadows and Considine would be ideally suited to the subject matter as they personally knew Gorman (Considine even based Morell's distinctive accent in A Room For Romeo Brass on Gorman's).



I did send an email to wittertainment on friday to see if you could ask Paddy about this but Dr M omitted that part of my text. (He did mention the bit where I said Dead Man's Shoes was my favourite film of the last decade, which was pretty cool).



I can't help but fear that, what with Meadows' continued success with the This Is England tv show and Considine's transition from actor to director, that this project may have been forgotten.

Ghostbusters 3. How long has Ackroyd been banging that drum? 22 years, that's how long. But it may actually arrive in 2012 with Reitman at the helm... you never know...

Guillermo Del torro's At the Mountains of Madness for sure. I'd love to see that movie.



I seem to recall rumours about Terry Gilliam being in line to direct a film of Good Omens, the book by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman.



Nic Cage has spent ages trying to get himself a comicbook movie. I seem to recall he tried to get the Superman gig, and was attached to Constantine for some time as well.



Similarly, would Superman Returns or the Green Hornet have been any better under Kevin Smith's direction?

I would have loved to see Terry Gilliam sink his creative teeth into the Harry Potter story.

One very simple answer ... The Evil Dead 4!!!



Ok, so Drag Me To Hell kind of was The Evil Dead 4 without the franchise attachment ... but really; Raimi always promised TED4, Bruce Campbell always wanted to do it and more importantly we all wanted to see it!



Just to add ... if it were a dream world and I could match any tale to any director then I'd have Dario Argento direct Through The Looking Glass.

I really believe that Jodo's Dune would've been something out of this world. I also really hope that Guillermo del Toro will get a chance to do "At the mountains of Madness", it could be really something. One certain film that never got made was the third act in the Three Mothers trilogy by Dario Argento. I know about the Terze Madre but that simply doesn't count. He should've made that film in the early 80s. It would've been spectacular.



What grieves me the most is the fact that some of my favourite directors like Andrei Tarkovsky and even Lynch never got chances to do enough films. On the other hand, difficulties refine, as they say.

Oh and I forgot the film I wanted the most: a sequel to David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me!

Re: David Lynch's three cows movie - didn't Eddie Izzard script a one-off sitcom about a family of cows? It was incomprehensible.



The Golden Compass was a missed opportunity - in my view it was a glorified commercial for a tarted up leftover song Kate Bush had intended for the 'Dinosaurs' cartoon! Steve Hackett had a much better song, 'Set Your Compass' (on his Wild Orchids album) that was more relevant to the story. Should the other stories in Pullman's trilogy have been filmed, I'd suggest him to do the music.

I'm a little confused as to some comments here that seem to be claiming that Schindler's List had "happy endings". I may have been watching a different film but I'm pretty convinced there was nothing "happy" or "feelgood" about that particular film, despite Schindler's noble act. It was heart-breaking.

One of the greatest films never made would have to be David Cronenberg's adaptation of Philip K Dick's short story 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' AKA 'Total Recall'. A few production sketches were published in the book 'Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K Dick On Film' by Brian J. Robb and judging from the sketches it would have been an ambitious adapation. And judging from the difficult production history, Cronenberg very much wanted to incorporate the themes of K. Dick's short story, but producer Ronald Shusett wanted to do an action blockbuster in his words; 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' on Mars.



On the subject of David Lynch another film he wanted to develop was 'Venus Descending' a fictitious adaptation of the death of Marylin Monroe. Not to mention he was also approached by producer Dino De Laurentiis to adapt The first Hannibal Lecter novel 'Red Dragon'. It would've been interesting to see Lynch's take on the biopic and a straight psychological thriller respectively, but Michael Mann's adaptation is so brilliant that there should be no regrets.

Stanley Kubrick’s Artificial Intelligence.

The script was partially written by Kubrick before his death and brought to life by Spielberg in 'AI'. The film produced by Spielberg is a nice one and you can feel in some how Kubrickian atmosphere and aesthetics. However, the subject of AI if dealt by Kubrick could have offered one of the highest moment in the history of cinema's metaphysic. Perhaps a new black monolith would have confronted us, our capacity to understand and explore the unknown, our wish to evolve, our struggle against death. Kubrick lost this very struggle to soon to provide us with alternative - perhaps only philosophical - arguments.

I would like to have seen Ralph Bakshi’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy completed, didn’t he run out of money or something? Also, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere ages ago that although John Huston did make The Man Who Would Be King (and I love it by the way) it had been an idea of his to bring it to the screen for years, he originally wanted Gable and Tracey in the Connery and Caine roles, now that I would LOVE to have seen..

I remember hearing an anecdote about Robert Rankin selling the rights to his Armageddon: The Musical before the purchasers had any real idea what they'd actually bought, and why they'd never be able to film it. Similarly, there's the story about Terry Pratchett being asked to rewrite Mort for the big screen because the execs in question didn't think Death could be a "good guy", and Douglas Adams being asked to do rewrites because the Ultimate Answer of 42 didn't make any sense.

Much as I suspect I'd be hurling things at the screen throughout, a small part of me would like to see those adaptations.



For quality movies we missed out on, I'd echo what's already been said about Gilliam's take on Watchmen, Harry Potter and Don Quixote. Although it seems I am in something of minority in actually liking Zak Snyder's Watchmen.

I have to agree with the poster who mentioned John Waters' Flamingos Forever, and add Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert's Sex Pistols project, Who Killed Bambi. Though it was made, perhaps not edited, the one I really want to see is Jerry Lewis' The Day The Clown Cried. My guess is it will never see the light of day.

Maybe not greatest but relevant and recent:



A version of "The Hobbit" by Del Toro without the baggage of having to cohere with "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.



Don't get me wrong I did like Jacksons trilogy (more so the first film) but I dislike the idea of the hobbit having to be crafted to link up with it; not just story wise but in artistic direction also.



The hobbit is a very different book and I would have loved to see a very different film for a different artist, not more of the same.



Still looking forward to Jacksons version.

All my suggestions appear to have already been mentioned... the only unmade film I would have loved to have seen certainly would not have been a greatest film... but I'd have loved to have seen it.



Don't laugh.



The third Peter Cushing 'Dr. Who' movie based upon 'The Chase'. The two that were made are by no means great movies, but they are fun... and I'd have loved to have seen the planned third.



All has gone quiet it seems on the J. Michael Straczynski penned 'Forbidden Planet' trilogy. I love the original film and would have liked to have seen what a version penned by JMS would have been like (so long as it had a good director attached and not turned into a star vehicle - pun intended).

Although Near_Dark has already mentioned it, it's worth considering 'Alien: Resurrection' in light of what Joss Whedon had to say about the finished and released movie. He said that it wasn't that they'd butchered his script, it was that they had filmed every single line of it wrong. Given the similarities between the crew of the Betty and the crew of Serenity (watch the two films back to back and do a character match-up...it's not tricky), and the roaring brilliance of Serenity, I would love to have seen Whedon's Alien the way Whedon actually intended for it to be seen.

Kubrick's holocaust project.

Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit.

I remember reading that a biopic about Edgar Allan Poe went into production a few years ago and was to be written and directed Sylvester Stallone!

First of all there is a potential epic that has been in development for around 5 years. Based on the novel HAROLD THE KING by Helen Holick. But I seriously doubt this will see the light of day anytime soon. Put it this way no one has ever made a movie about the events leading up to one of the most famous dates in history 1066.

I would have loved to have seen the Kubrick version of AI. I think it would have been a lot darker than Spielberg’s updated Pinocchio version. I also herd , but I am unsure if it is true , that Kenneth Brangher was working on a true to the book version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. But it never happened because of films like MARS ATTACKS and INDEPENDENCE DAY.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (L'enfer) looked as though it was going to be one of the most visually stunning films of the time and I would have loved to have seen a completed version as the test shots seen in the documentary were beautiful.



I guess the unlimited budget and the illnesses suffered by cast and crew did not help the production.

What about William Friedkin's "THE DEVIL’S TRIANGLE?" Fresh from his success with The Exorcist, Friedkin set his sights on a creepy Bermuda Triangle project. Signing a frankly startling cast of heavyweights (Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen and Charlton Heston), Friedkin found himself embroiled in completing Sorcerer, by which point Steven Spielberg had made Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Deemed too similar to Spielberg’s alien epic Triangle was puffed out.

The masterpieces of hardcore pornography knocking around inside the heads of David Lynch and David Cronenberg would be pretty interesting to see.

Richard Donner doing Man of Steel with Brandon Routh. Routh was good. He needed to be allowed to develop the character. Donner knows what he's doing.

Hi Mark,



I'd have to go with 'The Catcher in the Rye'. Over the years it's been reported that everyone from Scorsese, Spielberg, Malick, Wilder etc. have all attempted to bring an adaption of the book to cinematic audiences with no success.



Is it unfilmable? Maybe.



Is it potential stunning if done correctly? Yes.



As it's such an important text, which has a deserved reputation as one of the most influential works of literature of the 20th Century, surely it must rank very highly amongst the greatest films never made?



Chris

Coppola's 'Megalopolis' needs a mention. Rumoured to be about an incredibly rich man who builds his own utopia in New York City. Apparently it was shelved after 9/11.

For me, Darren Aronofsky's Wolverine film. Hugh Jackman has stated that they kept Aronofsky's script 90% the same. To me that means it's already 10% worse.



But at the end of the day I think its the films that the directors dont give up on, the films the pour their blood, sweat and soul into, the films they refuse to let go and end up as abandoned projects, are the films worth watching. Give me Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse now and I wont care about some movie he never made.

Ah... was just about to say Leone's siege of Leningrad project but I see various people have beaten me to it. On the Dollars boxset special features Sir Christopher Frayling explains the opening scene as Leone had recited and just from that description it sounded spectacular.



Another film I would have loved to have seen just out of curiosity, not because I think the actual film is bad (it is far from perfect though), is Stanley Kubrick's AI: Artificial Intelligence.



I realise that Spielberg stayed very close to Ian Watson's treatment in order to replicate Kubrick's vision as much as possible but I would loved to have seen a film that deals with that subject matter directed by the man himself. It's one of those films that you can imagine being pitch-perfect under Kubrick's direction and you can't help but speculate that it also would have been a superior film.

My picks would be the Superman script that Kevin Smith wrote (rejected for the one that eventually starred Brandon Routh and Kevin Spacey), and H.G. Wells' War Of The Worlds, set in the original time period - with Patrick Stewart as the journalist.

@Vincent, Bakshi was gonna do it but he was working on American Pop and Hey Good Lookin' (which was originally finished as mostly live action with some animation before LOTR but re-animated though out the year and eventually released in 82) soon after Lord of the Rings. He originally wanted it be called Lord of the Rings Part One but the studio believed the audience would pay for half a film, sequels were still extremely rare in 1978. The low budget animation company Rankin/Bass made a Hobbit animated film in 1977 and in the early 80s did a adaptation of the Return of the King which is clearly inspired by Ralph Bakshi's film so that's the closest to the sequel, shame it's pretty bad.

J.G. Ballard's High-Rise was once going to be adapted by Nick Roeg in the 70s, but he couldn't get the funding though. That would have certainly been interesting.

Not a great by far, but alot of people want Anchorman 2 to be made but the studios turned it down.



Not a classic, but it does have a cult following...

@tjmpeachy



There were some Rogger Rabbit shorts based after the film that were played before some films yonks ago.





They are on Youtube if you wanna check them out



Tummy Trouble

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLDtYsxtwXU



Roller Coaster Rabbit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6-KwC8ONyk&feature=related



Trail Mix Up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O48_Q7F3D4&feature=related





Hope you enjoy them if you haven't seen them fella :)

I would've loved to have seen Steven Spielberg's version of a James Bond film, that's if George Lucas hadn't convinced him to do Raiders of the Lost Ark (which turned out good) Also staying with Spielberg it would have been intriguing to see his stamp on "Return of the Jedi" that's until George Lucas angered the Director's Guild of America by placing the credits at the end of Empire Strikes Back and was unable to secure his friend's services and lastly I would have liked to have seen Frank Darabont's version of Indiana Jones 4 (that's until....well you know the rest.)

Terry Gilliam’s The Defective Detective.



David Fincher’s Rendezvous with Rama.



Paul Verhoeven's Crusade with Arnold Schwarzenegger.



Nottingham, the original idea for Ridley Scott’s awful Robin Hood which would have put a more sympathetic Sheriff of Nottingham in the lead role.

I've no idea who would direct it but someone should make a film of Gaiman's American Gods.