55 Planned Films That Never Got Produced For Better Or Worse... Mostly Better

Beyond talking about trailers and critiquing the films those trailers promote, writing for Cinema Blend occasionally includes reporting on a myriad of films that probably won’t ever exist. There is a palpable frustration that comes with seeing anticipated projects get abandoned by seemingly the only filmmakers who could have made the projects work. But it isn’t as if this problem only started in the Internet Age. From Hollywood’s earliest days, the best laid plans of directors and screenwriters have oft gone astray, and the amazing above video from Mental Floss singles out 55 such examples. And while it’s one of the biggest shames imaginable that Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon will never reach cinemas as its director intended, at least we never had to sit through Seriously, Dude, Where’s my Car? We dodged a bullet, people!

With his expected genial charm, John Green lays out some of the most outlandish and egregious films ever conceived, as well as the most incredible. He’s not unveiling any big secrets here, as much of what’s listed here are the directors’ white whales, but it’s still astounding hearing all of them back to back like this. Watch...

Check out a full list of all the films included in the video after the jump... Here's a list of every movie mentioned in the video...

Right off the bat, Green hits upon arguably one of the strangest casting choices I’ve ever heard, with Martin Scorsese wanting the band The Clash, who made the briefest of cameos in The King of Comedy, to star in Gangs of New York. What’s more ridiculous than that? The Beatles starring in Lord of the Rings, that’s what. That’s the kind of idea that I can only stutter about. But what’s even more bizarre than that? The pre-David Lynch version of Dune, as conceived in what sounds like an opium nightmare by Alejandro Jodorowsky, who originally planned to cast the film with artist Salvador Dali and Orson Welles, with music by Pink Floyd and art direction from Chris Foss and H.R. Giger. (Thankfully, we’ll soon get a closer look at this madness with the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune.)

But it isn’t all about crazy ideas causing projects to implode. Sometimes it’s because someone involved with the project died, as was the case with The Confederacy of Dunces, which lost John Belushi, John Candy and Chris Farley, or the big budgeted Leningrad, whose director Sergio Leone passed before production could begin.

And while no mention was made of Terry Gilliam’s long-gestating Don Quixote adaptation, there is mention of Orson Welles’ version, which was meticulously planned but still unmade. The same goes for David Fincher’s Heavy Metal passion project, which I would love to see one day, as his career began with interesting music videos.

Given the abundance of superhero films currently flooding the market, one might think that no superhero project would ever get trashed, but that was the case with Tim Burton’s Superman Lives, with the terribly miscast Nicolas Cage. (Or maybe it was perfect casting.) The same unfortunately goes for the Wachowski’s planned Plastic Man feature, and the 1965 Godzilla vs. Batman, an idea which makes my brain hurt so good.

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