Development Hell / Live-Action Films

Anime and Manga Adaptations

• The AKIRA live-action film has been this for a long time, with Warner Bros. acquiring the rights back in 2002, and more and more prospective producers passing on the project (Leonardo DiCaprio was once attached). Every other hot young actor in Hollywood has been considered for roles in the movie (notably, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chris Evans, Garrett Hedlund, and Kristen Stewart). Jaume Collett-Serra (House of Wax, Jungle Cruise) was once attached to direct before the project was halted over budget concerns. George Miller has confirmed that he turned down an offer to direct. Currently, Warner Bros. has Marco Ramirez (Netflix's Daredevil) attached to write with Christopher Nolan possibly involved in some way, and Justin Lin, David Sandberg (Lights Out), Jordan Peele, and Taika Waititi all in talks to direct, with the latter expressing the most interest. The film suffered yet another setback in July 2019 when negotiations with Waititi broke down over casting disputes (Waititi wanted lesser-known Asian actors playing the characters, while Warner Bros. pushed for big-name actors), resulting in Waititi signing on for Thor: Love and Thunder and the film losing its planned 2021 release date. In an October 2019 interview, Waititi said the film was still going to be made, but it would need to wait until production on Love and Thunder wraps.
• Sony Pictures registered many domains relating to a Hollywood Attack on Titan film back in 2014, but nothing ever came of it. There's now word that Warner Bros. is in talks for the film rights.
• In June 2006, producers Neil Mortiz and Roy Lee announced that they had the green light to go ahead with making an American remake of Battle Royale, which would, indeed, retain the "high schoolers killing each other" theme, and that New Line Cinema had given a tentative release date of 2008. Aside from the then-recent Virginia Tech Massacre making New Line nervous about the themes, it later turned out they still haven't acquired the rights to make the film in the first place and apparently don't wish to try. A television adaptation was planned for The CW but was later scrapped. Plus, the popularity of The Hunger Games franchise (which had some similar themes but went about them differently) probably rendered it unnecessary anyway.
• A live-action adaptation of Bubblegum Crisis was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 for a 2012 release. The rights were purchased by Cubix International in Singapore, and the project was set up to be a co-production with various companies in the UK, China, Canada and Australia, with the film itself being shot in Sydney under a $30 million budget, and options for three sequels. The writers and designers from the original anime were also in contact with the production team about maintaining consistency, and the film was confirmed to have a multi-ethnicity cast. There was even a Malaysian filmmaking reality show where part of the grand prize package was being hired to work on this movie. The first promo images were released in 2009, and then... nothing.
• A Hollywood live action adaptation of Cyborg 009 began development in 2005 with Michael Uslan producing and F.J. DeSanto on board to write the screenplay. Other properties from Shotato Ishinomori were said to be included in the deal. Pre-production for the film was scheduled for 2006 for a 2008 release, but nothing ever came of it. Uslan attempted to revive the project as an animated film, but that too fell into development hell. In 2009, IshimoriPro (who owns the rights) made a deal with another unspecified producer without Uslan's involvement, and in 2012, DeSanto confirmed that he was still attached to write the screenplay. Nothing about the project has seen the light of day since, but DeSanto did adapt the franchise into a western graphic novel. Supposedly the film project struggled to get off the ground due to the franchise's poor performance in the US.
• A sequel to Dragonball Evolution. It was being whispered about during promotion for the first, and it appears to end on a Sequel Hook, but poor critical and commercial reception have apparently shelved it. Fox still holds the film rights, despite not moving forward with the sequel. Their contract gives them a distribution stake in any future Dragon Ball films, live action or animated, and Funimation had to go through them to license Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F'.
• Not counting G-Saviour (which is just as well for Sunrise) there have been two attempts to adapt the Gundam franchise into a live action film.
  • The first attempt occurred way back in 1983, prior to the release of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. The film was to be the directorial debut of Chip Proser, use designs from Syd Mead (who would later go on to be the mechanical designer for ∀ Gundam) and use computer animation from Digital Productions (then known for The Last Starfighter). It was to be a very loose adaptation of Mobile Suit Gundam, with everything after the original Side 7 attack so different as to be In Name Only (for starters, Amuro and Char would have been brothers). Production was halted when Bandai realized they didn't have permission from all the rights holders, and the company elected to finance Zeta Gundam instead. This article contains all the available records of production, including mechanical designs, storyboards, and Proser's script.
  • The second attempt was announced in March of 2019 with Legendary Pictures and Brian K. Vaughan attached as a screenwriter. At San Diego Comic Con that year, Bandai teased the design of the film Gundam (a model kept under a box with a 'Coming Soon' sign) and promised more news in the following months. News finally came in April 2021, two years later, with the announcement of Netflix as a distributor and Jordan Vogt-Roberts as a director, with no further information such as a cast or a date production will begin. It's not even known if the film will be an adaptation of the original series, one of the many Gundam AU series, a wholly original story, or even if a direction for the film has been confirmed.
• Hellsing. Back in April 2008, a proof of concept trailer made the rounds online, to pitch the idea to studios to get them interested in the project. The girl playing Seras in the trailer was a hired model. However, the company developing the film pulled the trailer from their site and YouTube, indicating things may not have gone in favor of the project. No news concerning a Helsing film was present until March 2021, when Amazon Studios announced they had greenlit the film, with the screenplay to be written by Derek Kolstad (John Wick, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). This attempt appears to be completely divorced from the 2008 attempt.
• The rights for a live-action Hollywood Lupin III film were purchased back in 2003, and ads for the manga mentioned: "soon to be a major motion picture!" Nothing ever came of it.
• Legendary Pictures, on October 24, 2018, announced they had the rights to a film based on My Hero Academia, fresh off the success of My Hero Academia: Two Heroes in a limited theatrical run. No updates occurred until August 13, 2021, when Legendary announced it had secured a director, Shinsuke Sato, in what would be his first international production. There has been no other news including casts, a writer, or set production dates.
• In 2015, Lionsgate announced they had secured the rights to a live action adaptation of Naruto, with Michael Gracey, director of The Greatest Showman signed on as director. There was no news on the production front until May of 2020, when a casting call became available. Gracey went on record during a 2018 interview that he wouldn't commit to a script unless Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto gave it his blessing. As of February 2024, Gracey is no longer involved, with Destin Daniel Cretton being hired to direct the movie and cowrite its script.
• The live-action adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion was originally announced in 2003 by ADV Films but nothing has come of it since then, apparently due to the insane costs of pulling the series off correctly in live action compared to actual interest in such an endeavor. The collapse of ADV and the general decay of the American anime market didn't help it, either. Who's actually still involved remains up in the air, but the last time they said anything about it, John Woo was a producer and they were looking for more. That was in 2008.
  • Apparently, the producers got so far as that they needed Studio Gainax to hand over the rights so they could finally get moving... and that's when things fell apart. When ADV went to buy the rights they had optioned, Gainax backed out, citing certain unfulfilled conditions. The producers lost their window with the studio (at least for the moment), and ADV is now suing Gainax over the rights. This happened in 2011, and no word has been heard since. Hideki Anno's Studio Khara later gained all rights to the franchise, and released the four Rebuild of Evangelion movies. The release of Pacific Rim, which many considered to be sort of a Spiritual Adaptation of the series, probably didn't help either.
• Paprika was apparently going to have a live-action Hollywood remake around 2010, as articles from the time like this one or this one reported. It was going to be directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who compared the upcoming film to The Matrix, however nothing more was heard about it and Petersen passed away in 2022. The articles also mention alien invasion movie Uprising, that was going to be Petersen's next project, but ended up not being made either.
• A Hollywood live-action/CGI film based on the manga series Parasyte was announced in 1999 by Jim Henson Studios and Don Murphy's production company to be distributed by New Line Cinema. They confirmed it again in 2005, but nothing has been heard since. As with Star Blazers, the Japanese live-action franchise may have mooted the need for this film.
• A Hollywood live-action film based on Ranma ½ was optioned in the late 90s, but nothing ever came of it.
• The Robotech live-action film has been stuck here for a very long time:
  • It was originally announced in 2008 by Harmony Gold and Warner Bros.. Tobey Maguire was said to be producing. Also heavily hyped was the announcement that Lawrence Kasdan (yes, the same one who wrote The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Bodyguard) had written a script. Things were looking up until the fans were informed that Kasdan's script was handed over to Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville, Herbie: Fully Loaded) for rewrites. The script was then handed to another writer named Tom Rob Smith for yet another rewrite. Given the questionable sanity involved in not just going with a script by a lauded screenwriter (let alone entrusting it to a two mediocre writers and then one nobody to "rewrite"), fans were no longer optimistic that the film would be worth seeing if it was ever made.
  • The rights were sold to Sony in 2015, completely abandoning the original project, with Sony hoping to develop a franchise out of the property. James Wan was attached to direct for a while, but as his plate was full with Aquaman and The Conjuring 2, the hell continued.
  • In September 2017, Andy Muschietti (It) was attached to direct with Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman) attached to write. Decades of legal back and forth between Harmony Gold and Big West over who exactly owned the trademarks to Super Dimension Fortress Macross (and the most iconic part of Robotech) convinced onlookers the film would never be made until an April 2021 deal between Harmony Gold and Big West where the former gave up their claim to the entire Macross franchise internationally, while Big West recognized that Harmony Gold was the international licensor for Macross and would no longer contest the use of Macross trademarks in Robotech related items. A key part of the brokered deal was that Big West would no longer oppose the creation of a Robotech movie using Macross elements, and both sides would split the licensing fees Sony would pay. Whether the film gets made even with the major legal obstacle gone, however, is still unknown.
  • In April 2022, Hawkeye director Rhys Thomas was set to direct with Mark Canton and Gianni Nunnari producing, and Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka revising a script by duo Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man, Transformers: The Last Knight).
• A live-action Voltron, due to rights issues between the American rights holders (they own the names) and the Japanese rights holders (they own the likenesses). This seems to have been settled and there were rumors that Paramount and Relativity would team up on an adaptation back in Spring 2011, but it was eventually abandoned in favor of Voltron Force. Said series ended up getting canceled after one season, leaving the franchise in limbo for years.
  • Things seemed to be looking up as of 2016. With Universal buying DreamWorks Animation (the current owners of the Voltron franchise) and production of Voltron: Legendary Defender, Universal appeared to be dead set on starting a Voltron multimedia franchise, going full-steam ahead with the movie and David Hayter rumored to be attached as scriptwriter. However, in an October 2020 interview at the VoltCon convention, World Events Productions president Bob Koplar confirmed that Universal passed on the script, and the film option (as well as the rights to make new animated productions) expired as well. As per Koplar, World Events Productions is currently exploring options with other studios for a film or live-action television series. In April 2022, Amazon entered talks for the film rights.
• In the late '90s, Disney was in talks to make a live-action Sailor Moon, featuring Geena Davis as Queen Beryl (and, depending on the source, Alicia Silverstone or Kirsten Dunst rumored for the title role). At the time, Disney owned DiC, the then-US licencors of the Sailor Moon franchise. Save Our Sailors later reported that the project had been canceled to due to Kodansha, the Japanese publishers of the original manga, refusing to sell the rights. Not helping was the failure of two superhero films at then-rival Warner Bros., Batman & Robin and Steel, at the box office, the underperformance of the series itself in syndication, and the fact that both Davis and Silverstone (if the latter is credited as the one Disney was seeking for the title role) had recently starred in damaging box office bombs, including one of the two aforementioned superhero film Genre Killers. This article from Variety from 1997 mentions that director Stanley Tong (the live-action 1997 Mr. Magoo film) was attached to the project.
• A film adaptation of Saint Seiya was announced May 18, 2017 as a co-production between Toei Animation and the Chinese company AGRF (A Really Good Film Company) with Tomasz Baginski lined up to direct. Numerous delays plagued the film, however, and while rumors continue to circulate of casting choices and even active filming locations, none have been confirmed by Toei, AGRF, or Baginski. The only actress to actively confirm her involvement has been Famke Janssen, while at the same time not actively confirming what role she is playing.
• A movie based on Sentou Yousei Yukikaze was optioned to star Tom Cruise. The last news on it was Dan Mazeau, the screenwriter for Wrath of the Titans joining the project in 2013... and nothing after that.
• A live-action film based on Space Adventure Cobra was once in development at Lionsgate as a passion project for Alexandre Aja. It was greenlit in 2011 by French production companies Onyx and Studio 37, and a teaser poster was unveiled. Aja confirmed in 2015 that a script had been completed by him and producer Gregory Levasseur. However, in 2018, Aja confirmed that the project died following casting difficulties, budget concerns (it was once supposed to carry a $130 million price tag), and perceived similarities to Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
• Star Blazers was originally licensed by Disney. Somehow the script was leaked over the internet and the feedback was universally negative. Their treatment would have included almost none of the characters from the series and would have turned the Star Force into a Ragtag Band of Misfits. The Yamato/Argo would have been renamed Arizona (allegedly after the WWII American ship sunk at Pearl Harbor) and constructed under Mt. Rushmore. Given the location, this was not, unlike the anime, a spaceship built from the wreck of a sunken WWII ship. Thus, naming the ship after a sunken WWII ship was for no discernable reason in this case. Disney allowed the film license to expire. Christopher McQuarrie announced in 2011 that he was currently working on a script for Skydance Productions. It remains to be seen whether an American Star Blazers film even remains viable given the 2010 Japanese production of a live-action theatrical Space Battleship Yamato (the source material for Star Blazers). In a December 2012 interview, McQuarrie said that a script has been completed but no one can agree on what direction the film should go. 2017 saw a new producer, David Ellison, say he was trying to get the film moving again, but there has been no news since.
• Probably following the huge success superhero movies still enjoy, in 2015 there were talks for a live-action film based on Tiger & Bunny, with none other than Ron Howard as one of the producers. IMDB lists it as "in development" for 2019, and writer Ellen Shanman was attached to it as a screenwriter, but nothing else is known about it. As of March 2021, there has been no further news on the project.
• An American adaptation of Wicked City was rumored to be in the works, it is either deep in development hell or cancelled outright.

Comic Book Adaptations

Has its own page

Comic Strip Adaptations

• Warren Beatty still insists that there's going to be a sequel to Dick Tracy. Not a reboot, not even a Distant Sequel, but a normal sequel.
• A film adaptation of Dilbert has been attempted by creator Scott Adams for years. His most recent efforts date back to at least 2014, where he has kept updates on his writing efforts on his personal blog. Sadly, such efforts may never get past the screenplay level. Controversial remarks made by Adams in early 2023, causing the strip's syndication to come to an abrupt end (and Adams rebooting it as a paywalled 'adult series'), likely killed its chances for good.
• The Family Circus was announced by Fox in 2010, but nothing about it has surfaced since its announcement, likely due to the lackluster performance of another comic strip adaptation from them that year, Marmaduke.
• A second Flash Gordon film was announced in 2010 at Fox, nearly 30 years after the 1980 film was released. The film went through several directors and script rewrites, but nothing came out of it for nearly a decade. In June 2019, Disney took over production of the film after acquiring Fox, retooling it into an animated film with Taika Waititi (who, ironically, cited Flash Gordon as an inspiration for Thor: Ragnarok) in talks to write and direct.
• A Get Fuzzy film has been long rumored.
• Mandrake the Magician, a film about the master illusionist was announced back in 2016 with Sacha Baron Cohen set to play Mandrake, a notable departure from his usual comedic roles. Nothing further has been announced since that time but as of July 2021, Warner Media has not formally canceled the production.
• Opus: The Last Christmas, which is dead, according to Berkeley Breathed.

Literature Adaptations

• Back in 2011, an adaptation of 13 Reasons Why was announced with Selena Gomez in the lead role. Three years elapsed and nothing happened. Eventually, Netflix picked up the adaptation rights and developed it into a full series, with Gomez serving as an executive producer.
• In the early 2000s, Tom Hanks expressed interest in making and starring in film adaptations of Arthur C. Clarke's 2061 and 3001, although nothing has been heard of this since.
• Atuk, based on a book by Canadian author Mordecai Richler, was never filmed and is linked to a curse in which the actors who signed onto to star in it all met with untimely ends.
• An adaptation of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath has been in the works since at least 2010, if not earlier. It's been pushed back repeatedly and IMDB has very little information that hasn't changed much in all this time. The only screen adaptation of the novel that's been released was back in the 1970s and the few people who've actually seen it will usually tell you that it's terrible, so maybe it's a good thing this will probably never be released.
• An adaptation of The Berenstain Bears was discussed at Walden Media for several years, but quickly stalled due to director Shawn Levy's other projects in the pipeline. After the film rights reverted back to the Berenstain estate in 2014, rumors began circulating in 2017 that Fox had picked up the rights. Unfortunately, they got picked up the moment Disney acquired the studio, leaving that iteration of the film in limbo as well.
• Blood Meridian has gained a reputation as a Hard-to-Adapt Work, as while other works of Cormac McCarthy have been successfully adapted to film, the overwhelming violence and complex structure of Blood Meridian have left film studios and directors alike struggling to adapt it. Since the 1990s, attempts have been made by Todd Field, Ridley Scott and James Franco among others with Franco's attempt getting as far as shooting twenty minutes of test footage before it was quietly canned for unclear reasons. In 2023, it was announced that a film adaptation was moving forward with John Hillcoat directing and McCarthy both writing the script and in an executive producer role, but McCarthy's passing in June of 2023 has again put it into question.
• In 2013, Warner Bros. acquired the rights to adapt the Jo Nesbø novel, Blood on Snow. Leonardo DiCaprio was in talks to produce and possibly star in the film. In 2014, Daniel Espinosa was to direct the film while Chris Sparling was writing the script. There was nothing else mentioned about Blood on Snow until 2017, where Tobey Maguire was announced to direct and produce the film, while Jo Nesbø was going to write the script himself. But no other details about the film has been mentioned ever since.
• The Catcher in the Rye is probably the most legendary literary example. After his short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" got changed drastically when it was turned into My Foolish Heart in 1949, J. D. Salinger vowed to never have another film adaptation made of one of his works. That didn't stop lots of big names from trying in vain to talk Salinger into changing his mind, starting with Samuel Goldwyn shortly after the novel's release. Billy Wilder tried for a while, but Salinger personally asked him stop. Steven Spielberg and The Weinstein Company also made attempts. For a while in The '50s, Jerry Lewis sought to make Holden Caulfield his first dramatic starring role. Marlon Brando, Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson, John Cusack, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire have all been floated as possible portrayers of Holden over the years. One big issue may well have been that Holden was such an Author Avatar for Salinger that he didn't want to see anyone else in the role. Indeed, the one adaptation attempt Salinger was briefly on-board with was a stage version with himself as Holden in the aftermath of the novel's release (alongside Margaret O'Brien).
• It's possible the fourth The Chronicles of Narnia film entered this, as the contract of production company Walden Media with the C. S. Lewis' estate expired. The Mark Gordon Company acquired them, but their adaptation of The Silver Chair still couldn't come out. Netflix later acquired the rights and announced a whole new slew of adaptations, but nothing has been heard of their projects since, with even people who were announced to be working on them being unsure of their status.
• A live-action adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain series was once hinted at by Disney around a decade ago, but with nothing to back it up.
• The adaptation of Sister Souljah's urban fiction novel The Coldest Winter Ever. The adaptation was rumored as far back as 01 or 02. But nothing ever came of it. Then in 2005, Jada Pinkett Smith tried to get it off the ground as a producer but it fell through.
• Conan the Barbarian:
  • An indie film production of the original Robert E. Howard short story Iron Shadows in the Moon (which had fallen into Public Domain) was shot and scheduled for release in 2014, with Finnish hockey player Pasi Schalin as Conan. However, the film entered Development Hell when it turned out that producer George Tan (a mail-order distributor of Bruce Lee films) made false statements about settling the Conan film rights, and Tan subsequently vanished from the production. The film has never been released.
  • A third Schwarzenegger Conan has been in the works on and off since the second film was released in 1984.
    • Author Karl Edward Wagner was hired to write the script, and ended up writing three distinct versions with increasingly smaller budgets before the film was scrapped completely due to the financial woes De Laurentiis was facing in the wake of Dune.
    • De Laurentiis tried again in the early 90s, with a script titled Conan the Conqueror, by Charles Edward Pogue. This was rewritten into Kull the Conqueror when Schwarzenegger proved unavailable.
    • In 2001, the original film's director John Milius was hired to write and direct a sequel, with the Wachowskis producing and Schwarzenegger set to return. The script, titled King Conan, Crown of Iron, was completed, but a number of factors culminating in Schwarzenegger's election as Governor of California kept the film from happening. Arnie, for his part, has expressed that he really wants one last shot at playing Conan before he retires from acting. Time will tell if he gets the chance.
    • In 2012, it was announced that Universal had optioned the rights to the character and brought on The Fast and the Furious producer Chris Morgan to develop a sequel title The Legend of Conan. Drafts of the script were completed and some location scouting was said to take place, but Universal passed on greenlighting the production, letting the rights lapse in 2016.
• The ongoing tale of the film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. First of all, the book was only published years after its author's suicide when his mother found a handwritten manuscript. Attempts were made to make a movie starring John Belushi in 1982, but then Belushi died. Then there was going to be one with John Candy in 1994, but then Candy also died. And then one with Chris Farley in 1997, but then... well... yeah. Yet another attempt with Will Ferrell seemed to be going well and had even accrued other big names like Lily Tomlin and Mos Def. Then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the film's setting. Between the author's tragic death, the string of attached stars that likewise died early, and its connection to Hurricane Katrina, the adaptation's developed a low-key reputation as a cursed production.
  • At one point, John Waters was being considered to direct an adaptation. Waters himself wrote that it was the one and only time he seriously considered making a film not based on one of his own scripts. Oh, what might have been...
  • Speaking about Waters, he had planned to direct a family-oriented Christmas comedy called Fruitcake about a gay teenager finding acceptance during the holidays for a 2007 release. The film never got made due to financial troubles at production company Capitol Films (unlike Waters' newer projects, this did not have studio backing) and seems to have been locked up due to that company's bankruptcy. Waters hasn't directed since then (but has done many acting roles, books and live appearances).
• On November 14th, 2016, a live action/CG hybrid film adaptation of the 1968 children's book Corduroy was announced with Tim Story as the director and originally produced by CBS Films. News on the Corduroy movie wouldn't resurface until December 11th, 2020, when Jon Dorsey (of This Is Us fame) was announced as the film's screenwriter, and moving from CBS Films to Paramount. As of 2022, news on the movie adaptation has been very sparse.
• In April 2011, Warner Bros. acquired the rights for a film adaptation of Mark Haddon's mystery novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time with Steve Kloves as director, but as of 2023, no details have been mentioned since.
• The last film in The Divergent Series, Ascendant, officially entered this due to Allegiant flopping at the box office. Plans shifted to making the final entry a television production of some sort rather than a theatrical release, but Shailene Woodley's (among other actors) stated disinterest in doing another installment made even that questionable. It ended up being cancelled in 2018.
• In 2006, producer Boris Acosta began an ambitious task of adapting Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy into various mediums, including a live-action film trilogy, which was first announced back in August 2008. An all-star team was assembled, with Dante scholar Dino Di Durante writing the scripts, Armand Mastroianni as director, Chuck Shuman as the cinematographer and Aldo De Tata as composer. Andy García, Adrien Brody and Jim Caviezel were all considered to portray Dante, with Al Pacino in the running for Virgil. The trilogy was set to be released between 2009 and 2012. However, during pre-production of the first film, Inferno, Acosta realized that its proposed $55 million budget was too expensive and decided to produce lower-budgeted films to help fund the live-action films, as well as an animated film trilogy. He has since produced and/or directed documentaries about The Divine Comedy, a short film based on Inferno, as well as a 9-season television series. The live-action films are still in development as of 2022.
• The Dragonriders of Pern has been in development hell since probably the '80s. At one time there was a TV series that was in production, but it was basically In Name Only so it never went forward (most people see this as a good thing). A movie was supposed to be released in 2009, but the date got pushed back to 2011.
  • Warner Brothers optioned all 22 volumes of the series for a film adaptation in summer of 2014.
• In 2006, it was announced that a new film based on Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins character (previously adapted in Devil in a Blue Dress starring Denzel Washington) was in the works, with Jeffrey Wright attached to star as Easy and Mos Def on board to play his Psycho Sidekick Mouse. HBO acquired the rights to the film and were said to be seeking a theatrical release, but the project stalled out after a while.
• A film adaptation of Eleanor & Park was announced in 2014 to be produced by DreamWorks SKG and the screenplay to be written by the author Rainbow Rowell. But in 2016, Rowell revealed that the film was no longer in development and she still had the rights. Then in 2019, she announced that the film was back, this time to be produced by Picturestart and Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B and she would still write the screenplay. In July of 2020, Rowell revealed that it was to be directed by the Japanese filmmaker Hikar and casting would be soon. As of October 2023, no cast news or anything related to the film has been announced.
• The Elfstones of Shannara and Magic Kingdom for Sale — SOLD! movies. Yes, there are plans. One version of the proposed script for the latter would have given Ben a son and daughter, but Terry Brooks nixed that because their characters weren't developed enough. Shannara eventually went to television.
• In 2008, HandMade Films announced plans for Eloise in Paris — a live-action adaptation of the Eloise book of the same name has been in development since late 2007-2008 and was to star Australian child actress Jordana Beatty for the title role alongside Uma Thurman. A few years later and yet little, if any, development was announced. Now, Beatty's clearly too old to play the title character.
  • Development of the film was restarted in 2020 however, with Beauty and the Beast screenwriter Linda Woolverton to pen the screenplay.
• In 2019, an adaptation of the novel Finding Jack was announced, infamously starring a CGI James Dean and announced for a November 2020 release date. The announcement attracted controversy and then... nothing. Some sources have claimed it was canceled.
• Every few years, there's a rumored adaptation of George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman books. In 1970, actor/producer Stanley Baker optioned rights to the first book, for a project that never materialized. In 2007 Celtic Films announced a made-for-TV adaptation of Flashman at the Charge with Colin Firth. This was apparently derailed by Fraser's death. Most recently, in 2011 rumors surfaced of a film featuring Michael Fassbender - rumors Fraser's estate denied. Besides the difficulties of adapting the novels, from the period setting to their politically incorrect tone, that the one extant Flashman film, 1975's Royal Flash, flopped at the box office likely weighs heavily in studios' minds.
  • Then in March 2015, it looks like it's happening again.
• Michael Cimino spent much of the '70s and '80s trying to make The Fountainhead into a film, with Clint Eastwood playing Howard Roark. Then Heaven's Gate happened.
• What the hell is up with Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon movie?
• In 2011, Sony and MGM had plans to (re)make the sequels to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and were going to shoot them back-to-back. But despite hiring Steven Zaillian to write the screenplays, the disappointing box office (Sony had expected the first film to be their successor to The Da Vinci Code and spent millions marketing it) combined with David Fincher's refusal to direct and the decline of the book series' popularity have shelved these sequels for the time being.
• TriStar Pictures has held the film rights to The Nightingale (Kristin Hannah) since 2015. Michelle MacLaren was initially signed to direct, but left the project in 2016. Mélanie Laurent signed on as director in 2019, with real life siblings Dakota and Elle Fanning cast as the two sisters. filming was initially delayed by the pandemic; the movie's release date was subsequently pushed back, first from December 2020 to December 2021, then again in 2021 to December 2022, before ultimately being removed entirely from TriStar's release calendar.
• The unfinished 1938 production of I, Claudius was waylaid by an accident involving its lead actress and by the difficulty that Charles Laughton had in getting into Claudius's role. Only a few scenes from the film were ever publicly released in the 1960s. (The DVD release of the TV version of I, Claudius includes a documentary which features this footage.)
• Invisible Monsters, based off of a book penned by Chuck Palahniuk (of Fight Club fame), has been in development for forever and a half.
• An adaptation of the young adult horror novel Killer Pizza was announced by MGM in 2011 with Adam Green set to write and direct. Very little has been heard about the project since.
• Marie Lu's Legend Series was optioned for a possible film adaptation as early as 2011. No concrete news about the film have emerged since then.
• In 2002, DreamWorks bought the rights to Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm novels. In 2008 Paramount acquired the rights and in 2009 it was announced that Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci would write a screenplay with Steven Spielberg as a possible director. It seems that the project has since died.
• An adaptation of the Maximum Ride books was announced by Summit Entertainment in 2010 with Catherine Hardwicke (director of the first Twilight movie) set to direct. Cut to 2012 and it looks like that the project has been quietly canceled due to Lionsgate buying Summit, Alex Cross (from the same author) flopping at the box office and Lionsgate/Summit choosing to adapt the Divergent series instead. The screenwriter for the movie also died in March 2013. Eventually, it was released as a digital film in 2016.
• A film adaptation of Ready Player Two was announced after the book was released. Steven Spielberg is unsure if he'll return as he stated that Ready Player One (2018) was the third hardest film he's ever made. Olivia Cooke is also unsure about returning, stating she might be too old for her role by the time filming begins.
• A film adaptation of Red Queen was announced in 2015, with Elizabeth Banks being involved. Six years later, it was reannounced as a television series for Peacock, with Banks still attached.
• Morgan Freeman has since the early 2000s showed interest in making a Rendezvous with Rama adaptation, and David Fincher has even been attached to direct. Problems have emerged with both funding and finding a good enough script.
• In 2010, Steven Spielberg signed on to direct a film adaptation of Robopocalypse, with Drew Goddard writing the screenplay. Speilberg's studio, DreamWorks SKG, was set to finish the film for a 2013 release by Touchstone Pictures (owned by Disney) domestically, then it was bumped to 2014 after financial issues at DreamWorks plagued the project and led to 20th Century Fox jumping on board. Then, DreamWorks announced the film had been shelved indefinitely thanks to script disagreements and continuing financial strives. Now, with DreamWorks' deal with Disney expiring and moving to Universal in 2016, and major restructuring at DreamWorks, the project may finally be coming off the ground. Ironically enough, Disney is now back on board thanks to buying Fox.
• A short Alternate History story about a modern U.S. marine unit that ends up in Ancient Rome and must take on Augustus's forces in battle, called Rome, Sweet Rome and posted by James Erwin on Reddit in 2011, attracted enough attention that Warner Bros. bought it with the intention of making it into a film. Though Erwin wrote a screenplay, it went through several different producers over the years and was entirely rewritten in 2013 by Brian Miller, who changed the marines to be a special forces unit instead. As of 2022 (over a decade later), it's still languishing in limbo with no news of production, and Erwin has gone on to write other books.
• In 2016, it was announced that DreamWorks SKG had purchased the rights to make Gay Talese’s novel The Voyeur’s Motel as a film with Sam Mendes set to direct and Krysty Wilson-Cairns to write the screenplay. However, due to controversy surrounding the source material and a 2016 documentary also detailing the subject, the project was cancelled.
• Adaptations for Terry Pratchett's works have hit this roadblock.
  • Sir Terry himself had joked that the road to film for Good Omens had become so long and complicated that even he stopped paying attention. He relied on fans at conventions and signings to keep him posted on the latest news/rumors. One such rumor was that Robin Williams would play the Aziraphael and Terry Gilliam was at one point attached to direct, with a script was completed in 2002, but the project never got off the ground. Ultimately, the book was adapted into a live action series by Prime Video.
  • DreamWorks SKG was going to make a Bromeliad film. Where'd that go?
  • And somewhere around 2011, news came that Sam Raimi was directing The Wee Free Men from a script by Pamela Pettler (Tim Burton's Corpse Bride). Since the initial announcement, nothing. Pratchett apparently vetoed a script that "had all the hallmarks of something that had been good, and then the studio had got involved", and then told everyone "it probably won't happen." (As of 2013, the latest news on that one is that the rights reverted at around the same time Sir Terry set up his own production company, and Rhianna Pratchett is now writing a script. In 2016, the Jim Henson Company were announced as the producers.)
  • Pratchett was fond of citing an early aborted interaction with a major American producer - who he publicly denied was Disney - who assured him that they were absolutely in love with Mort and really wanted to do the movie of the novel - but considered Americans would have a problem relating to Death as the star of a feelgood movie, so we're gonna have to write the character out. Pratchett said this was when he started to get cynical about proposed big-screen versions of his novels. He would also point out, as evidence nobody in Hollywood knows what's going on, that Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey must have been already in production at the time.
• In 2010, some very early conceptual work was leaked for a live-action/CGI Thomas & Friends movie, with 9 director Shane Acker at the helm. After three years, it dropped off the radar and what little information about it that's since come teeters between this or cancellation.
• The Three-Body Problem was filmed, but after two years, nobody knows when it will be released, if at all.
• According to its Wikipedia article, the film adaptation of journalist Jake Adelstein's memoir book Tokyo Vice was supposed to be filmed in Tokyo around 2015, with Daniel Radcliffe taking the role of Adelstein. In 2019 the film was scrapped in favor of a HBO Max 10-episode series directed by Michael Mann and starring Ansel Elgort, which premiered in 2022.
• Apparently, there were plans for a Warrior Cats movie, but they were dropped when it was considered a gamble in light of the economic recession, due to the appropriateness of the content of what is ostensibly a children's series. The film's status was downgraded from "definitely going to happen", to "not even under consideration". As of late 2016, however, the rights to a movie were obtained and a producer (David Heyman) named, so it's more likely, but not 100% certain.
• There's been talk going around about filming the first installment of The Wheel of Time, The Eye Of The World since the turn of the century, but absolutely nothing has come of it. Probably because nobody likes the implications of filming the first in a series of 14. A live-action series did took off on Prime Video, however.
• An adaptation of Where's Wally? (a.k.a. Where's Waldo? in the US) has been in the works for quite some time, but it's never gotten any traction. Paramount and Universal all had interest in a Where's Wally? film, but eventually declined. MGM eventually got the film rights to do a live-action movie in 2011, but its 2015 release came and went with.....nothing. DreamWorks Animation bought the company who owned the Where's Wally? property in 2012, but let MGM keep the film rights for the time being, and things seemed to be headed back on track with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg signing on as producers.....then DreamWorks was purchased by Universal, sending the film back to Hell once again as the rights disputes are sorted out.
• From Classic Hollywood, there was John Ford's production of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company. Ford was a lifelong fan of Conan Doyle's novel and spent decades trying to adapt it for the screen. He came closest in 1960 when he contracted with Samuel Bronston for a production which was to film in Spain with John Wayne, Laurence Olivier, and Alec Guinness. But pre-production became mired in budget wrangles, with Conan Doyle's estate demanding an exorbitant fee for the film rights. After several years in limbo, the project fell through, but Ford never gave up on White Company. As late as 1973 he announced it as a future project, but Ford's deteriorating health prevented it from getting past the idea stage.
• For about a decade now, various Hollywood studios have been wanting to produce a faithful adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that would take advantage of modern special effects, and possibly start a new franchise or cinematic universe of Land of Oz-related films. This shouldn't be too hard, since the original novel is in the public domain, yet no project has officially entered production as of 2020, likely due to the fact that the 1939 musical film is still one of the most beloved films of all time, if not the most beloved, ensuring any new adaptation of the source would have some pretty big shoes to fill in the eyes of the audience, and studios may not be willing to take that risk. Instead, various films have been made that tie into that film, the most notable being Oz the Great and Powerful.
• A relatively obscure 1973 novel called The Yellow Jersey went through a crazy three decade rollercoaster ride in Hollywood. A story about an aging cyclist who unexpectedly finds himself contending for a victory in the Tour de France, while also coaching a younger cyclist and getting involved in a Love Dodecahedron, an adaptation was put into development by Columbia Pictures shortly after the novel was published. By 1975, Michael Cimino was attached to direct, and visited the Tour to start the research phase, but he got tied up with The Deer Hunter. In the meantime, Columbia dropped out, and it passed through several other studios, including Universal Pictures and ITC Entertainment. A number of big names had been offered the lead role, including Steve McQueen (actor) and Sylvester Stallone, but said no. Oddly, it ended up back at Columbia in 1983, with a fairly solid package of talent penciled in to participate. Dustin Hoffman—fresh off Tootsie—was going to play the lead role, veteran producer Carl Foreman would be in charge, Chariots of Fire screenwriter Colin Welland would do the script, and Cimino (who, as mentioned above, had Development Hell experience with The Fountainhead), wanting to redeem his career after the Heaven's Gate fiasco, was still interested in directing. But they ran up against the tricky logistics of actually filming at the tour. Cimino's initial idea was to have Hoffman participate in the Real Life race, which was soundly rejected. By 1986 it all fell apart. Foreman had died, then Cimino quit, followed by Hoffman, and Columbia pulled out for a second time. The producers then signed with The Cannon Group, who touted Robert De Niro and Harrison Ford as possible stars, and began filming second-unit footage even without a director. Mickey Rourke signed on to star, then quit two days later. Cannon dropped out, but the producers kept it on life support for the next decade, now as a possible vehicle for Tom Cruise or Kevin Costner, before finally giving up. An odd postscript is that Hoffman ended up appearing in a film about the Tour de France anyway—The Program (2015).
• Diane Duane wrote a screenplay for the first book of the Young Wizards series and reported that it was in very early development stages on the Young Wizards website back in 2007. As of 2010, there has been no progress whatsoever towards a finished movie.
• Lauren Beukes' Urban Fantasy novel Zoo City seemed to be quite a hot property for a time, before any news about the movie adaptation disappeared.
• On August 2018, Netflix announced a live-action adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm directed by Andy Serkis . However, production behind the movie has been moving at a snail's pace. Updates on the film wouldn't get known until June 2020, when Christian Bale was planned to play a leading role. After the release of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Andy Serkis revealed that production on the movie will continue sometime in 2022 or 2023.

Theatre Adaptations

• There has been talk of a film version of Aida for years, but things have clearly stalled.
• This trope tends to hit Andrew Lloyd Webber a lot. Evita was first discussed in the 1970s, right after the release of the concept album. The film was released in 1996. Cats was almost an animated film in the 90s, but only got a film adaptation in 2019. The film of the musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard has languished since it was new, with brief flickers of life every few years.
• Following the success of Chicago, Miramax acquired the film rights to Pippin in 2003. Over a decade later, the rights moved to The Weinstein Company with James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now) writing, and Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced as co-producers following year. In 2018, as a result of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment allegations and the company's subsequent bankruptcy a year prior, the film rights have reverted to Stephen Schwartz, with director Rob Marshall possibly being eyed to direct while the rights were to be shopped to other studios. There have been no further developments since.
• In 2012, Searchlight Pictures acquired the film rights to the musical "I Dreamed a Dream", based on the life of Scottish singer Susan Boyle, planning to develop a movie adaptation. Nothing has been heard since.
• There has been rumors of Miss Saigon getting a live action adaptation since at least 2009. In 2016, Danny Boyle was being discussed as a director for the film set to release... In 2018. 2018 has come and gone with no news of the production going anywhere.
• In January 2012, it was announced that David Farland's series The Runelords would be adapted into a film. A website and a Twitter page were even made to promote it. Due to the book series not being very well-known to begin with, as well as the fact that the last book in the series has entered its own development hell, it is plain to assume that this project went nowhere.
• There has been a lot of talk about the very popular musical version of Wicked being made into a movie. It appears to be just that: talk. Oh sure, it's said to be officially confirmed and the studio says the project isn't dead (which came out back in March 2014), but they still have yet to get anyone on board (director, writers, cast, etc). The fact the musical made its debut on stage in 2003 and there has yet to be a movie of it is especially odd considering that the musical itself was actually produced by Universal, which logically should streamline the movie-making process.
  • At least two animators at Disney want to see an Animated Adaptation. There was an unofficial storyboard of "Defying Gravity" created by an animator has been floating around for a while. There was also another animator who hoped Disney (or at least some animation studio) would pick up the film. A possible third person who does character designing for Disney also made his own concept arts for what he thought Wicked might look like coming out of Disney as a part of their art portfolio. Sadly, considering the musical is property of Universal Studios, the chances of Disney getting hold of such a project is dubious. The blockbuster reception of Frozen has also likely killed the chances of Disney animating Wicked; the stories are incredibly similar, even down to the original Elphaba actress Idina Menzel being the voice of Queen Elsa. It's a joke in both fandoms that Frozen is the closest thing to a Wicked adaptation we'll see.
  • Other things that have been said about making a film are that "they're waiting for the musical ticket sales to taper off", and also that, based on the success of the Les Misérables film, a Wicked movie "will be made sooner than later".
  • It's been taking so long that Menzel herself has expressed that by the time a film starts being made, she and Kristin Chenoweth (the original Glinda) will probably be too old to believably reprise their roles. And her concern isn't unfounded. Both are still gorgeous of course, but even if filming started right this minute, they'd be playing characters that are supposed to be roughly half their current age (though there is a timeskip in the musical after Shiz).
  • The film eventually managed to get Stephen Daldry attached as director, with original book writer Winnie Holzman and composer Stephen Schwartz working on a screenplay, and was given a tentative date of December 2019, but it was later pulled off the schedule and put on hold, with Universal instead focusing its attention on the adaptation of Cats, which took its old release date.
  • It was later given another release date of December 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused it to be pulled off the schedule once again as Universal changed their release dates, with Sing 2 taking its spot.
  • Later that same year, Daldry stepped down from the director’s chair, putting the project back at square one.
  • In 2021, the film found a new director, Jon M. Chu, and cast Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo as Glinda and Elphaba respectively. The adaptation is now planned to be filmed in two parts, set to release in 2024 and 2025, but time will tell if production will get off the ground this time around.

TV adaptations

• A film based on Are You Afraid of the Dark? was announced back in 2017 for a Halloween 2019 release, and to be produced by Matt Kaplan, but it was taken off of the schedule in Feburary 2019. A mini-series was created instead.
• The Movie of Arrested Development languished in this and Netflix reviving the series probably ended the chances anyway.
• There were plans for a Babylon 5 theatrical film. There was a project to produce one in 2004, but it was aborted in 2005. It would have been called ''The Memory of Shadows'' and involved Galen and an EarthForce intelligence officer tracking down an intergalactic conspiracy that used Shadow technology.
• This is the current and probably permanent location of the proposed film of the television series Blake's 7 since Paul Darrow (the actor who played Avon) resigned from the project due to Creative Differences.
• Doctor Who has been propositioned for a film several times since the last time he was on the big screen (starring Peter Cushing in the 1960s). The 1996 TV movie doesn't count as it was never intended for cinematic release and was really a Failed Pilot Episode for a proposed TV revival. Most attempts were during the period when there was no TV series, and were stalled due to the uncertainty over the franchise, especially considering any theatrical movie would have been a total reimagining. One proposal had the Doctor and Master as half-brothers with Borusa as their grandfather. Another would have reimagined the Daleks as bipedal Terminator-style machines. And yet another proposal wanted to cast Johnny Depp as the Doctor. In 2011, David Yates proposed making a Doctor Who film despite the lack of official cast or crew on board or any interest from the BBC in giving permission. There is also a strong faction of Who fans who are opposed to the idea of a film not taking place in the TV continuity, or worried that a film would overshadow the show. Interestingly, the Doctor's status in the current series as being "Last of the Time Lords" is borrowed from the working sub-title for the late 80s movie proposal.
• The Fugitive was released in 1993, but TPTB had been trying to get it off the ground since 1989.
• Starting in The '90s, Sherwood Schwartz tried to get a Gilligan's Island movie made, with lots of rumored casting choices circulating among fans, but nothing ever happened. A Darker and Edgier Gilligan adaptation screenplay by Charlie Kaufman made the rounds for a while, and James Gunn tried to get it greenlighted around 2014, but Schwartz's estate said no.
• Of all things, a feature film adaptation of Laverne & Shirley was announced in 2010, with, of all people, Jamie Foxx writing the screenplay. According to series creator Garry Marshall, the movie was to have been something of a Darker and Edgier take on the series, updating the setting to the present day and featuring Milwaukee's finest (played by Jennifer Garner and Jessica Biel, respectfully) having grown up in the streets, with such gems as Laverne's trademark "L", iconically embroidered in the upper right corner of her shirts and sweaters in the series, instead tattooed on her arm. Small wonder that exactly nothing else has been heard about the project since then.
• The doomed Red Dwarf film has a complicated history, mostly revolving around budget problems. It came very close to entering production in 2001, to the point where shooting schedules had been worked out and costume tests were being done, but a last-minute yanking of the budget brought the project to a standstill. Several restarts would be attempted over the course of 7 or 8 years, but ultimately nothing would come of it; when the television series (which had ended due to Doug Naylor's desire to focus on making the film) restarted various parts of the film's script was cannibalized for episodes (most notably "The Beginning", which borrows much of the film's set-up, but a notorious set piece made its way into "Lemons").
• Skins. It was supposed to be released in summer 2011, but as of the last report they were having difficulty even just figuring out which characters were going to be in it. While it was originally supposed to focus just on tying up Generation 2's loose ends, they also were trying to shoehorn in a few characters from Generation 1, and then with the additional third generation, things became even more complicated. Especially with some fan speculation that the show's sixth series in 2012 may be its last, and the film may be intended as a wrap-up to the whole franchise. As it turned out, said fan speculation was true, and the film ended up shelved to instead make way for three extra-long episodes focusing on Cassie, Cook and Effy years later, concluding the whole show.
• A Sliders movie has been discussed since 1999-2000.
• After the success of his Austin Powers films in the late 90s, Mike Myers was in talks do a film based on his old Saturday Night Live character, Dieter, the German talk show host of Sprockets. However, after being given a year and a half to work on the script, Myers felt it wasn't strong enough and abandoned it. Universal forced him to do a different movie so he wouldn't breach his contract, resulting in The Cat in the Hat.
• The Stargate Atlantis film Extinction has been put on hold indefinitely. This is due to the cancellation of Stargate Universe and MGM's waning interest in the franchise.
  • Same goes for the third Stargate SG-1, Revolution, which would have featured the SGC going public.
• A film based on the short-lived Comedy Central show That's My Bush! entitled Secret of the Glass Tiger was proposed sometime after its cancellation, although nothing more was heard afterward.
• Tweenies was announced in 2004 for a summer 2005 release, but nothing ever came of it.
• The rumors about Xena: Warrior Princess have been circling around since the series ended in 2001. It has been discussed many times by series creator Rob Tapert, who kept saying it was stuck because of legal issues at Universal. Looks like it will never get made, though.
• The second The X-Files film I Want to Believe fell victim to this concept. The show ended in 2002, but the script ended up in Development Hell for six years. What was supposed to be a continuation of the Myth Arc ended up being a drawn-out Monster of the Week episode featuring a psychic. The fans were not pleased. It didn't do well. Now fans are hoping a third movie will wrap up loose threads of the plot. Chris Carter stated that he would make a third X-Files featuring the 2012 invasion promised by the series finale and was to be released in the summer of 2012 if the second X-Files did well. 2012 has come and gone, and no mention has ever been made about a third film. A six-episode season of the TV series was released in early 2016 instead.
• Sensualità a Corte, an Italian sketch comedy parodying soap operas and costumed melodramas starring gay French baronet Jean-Claude and his overbearing unnamed mother, began in 2005 and quickly became a cult show. In 2008 Marcello Cesena, the actor who plays Jean-Claude, stated that a prequel film was going to be made and that it would finally star the MC's then-unseen father. It's late 2023 at the time of this writing, Sensualità a Corte still comes back every few years, but the film project is most likely dead and buried.

Video Game Adaptations

• This document details how there were projects to turn several Sega properties including Altered Beast (1988), Golden Axe and Shinobi into "feature films and television series for worldwide releases". None of them ever got off the ground. Come 2022, however, and bolstered by the huge success of the live action Sonic The Hedgehog film and its sequel, a live action film based on Streets of Rage was announced, followed soon after by film adaptations of Comix Zone and Space Channel 5. Time will tell if any of these come to light or if they succeed.
• In 2011, a film adaptation of the game Alan Wake was announced with former New Line head Robert Shaye (who has a first-look deal with Warner Bros.) set to produce. Nothing has been heard about it since.
• American McGee's Alice. There were even rumors of Tim Burton directing, probably just because the game appears heavily inspired by his works. A Burton-directed Alice film was released in 2010, but it has nothing to do with the videogame. As of 2017, the film is in preproduction with Chinese actors in mind, but nothing is set stone.
• Army of Two was set to have an adaptation, announced in 2008 and to be released in 2011. As of 2021, it's safe to say the film is cancelled outright.
• The BioShock film has taken this road because of budgetary concerns also due to Gore Verbinski not wanting to compromise the atmosphere for a lighter rating. This also led to the higher-ups deciding to shoot overseas, forcing Verbinski to step down as director due to his attachment to other projects at home. While he may remain as a producer, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) will replace him as director. In an early 2011 interview, Verbinski implied that the project was dead, in part due to difficulty finding anyone willing to finance it as an R-rated picture (and Verbinski's lack of interest in watering down the material for a PG-13). Fresnadillo has since left the project, and the game's director Ken Levine ultimately agreed to pull the plug on the project in 2013 once he felt Universal's suggested replacement and lower budget would not adapt his game very well. Rumors of the film picking back up resurfaced in 2014 when it was revealed Sony had been attached to the project, evidenced by their acquisition of several domain names related to the movie. However, as of 2021 there has been no further progress.
• Jennifer Lopez was in talks with Walden Media to produce the film adaptation of Carmen Sandiego back in 2011. Though an animated series was announced to be in production for Netflix in 2017, no updates of the film project have been made. Even prior to that, rumors have been floating around since the 90s.
• Castlevania seemed to have been this one for some years, and still is, thanks to the writers' strike.
  • Castlevania might actually be one of the rare cases in which Development Hell is a good thing. Originally, the script was referred to as a sort of "Dracula Begins" and did away completely with the Vampire Killer. Instead, Simon had a BFS and everything that makes Castlevania what it is in favor of basically a retelling of Dracula. The current director signed onto the project because of the Vampire Killer and how the hero can be just as "dangerous and sexy" as the villain. The movie poster revealed in 2009 shows Simon holding a katana as well as the Vampire Killer looking upon Dracula's castle in a similar picture to what is usually used as box art for the games.
  • This may be underway now, with James Wan attached as director. But it looks like it won't be anytime soon as he has other projects in the forefront.
  • Paul W.S. Anderson is still attached to it somehow, as he was asked about the movie during the promotion of Resident Evil: Retribution. He claimed that there are issues over how to properly adapt it, and apparently some rights issues.
  • Ultimately, Netflix released a Castlevania animated series written by Warren Ellis, so something shook loose.
• A Clock Tower movie has supposedly been in the works since 2007, even having multiple release dates set and the main characters cast. However, with the synopsis constantly being changed and nearly everyone involved dropping out of the project (one director even being found dead in his hotel room), it's unlikely the movie will ever be finished or released.
• There was an attempt for a Crazy Taxi film in the early 2000s by Richard Donner. The only thing outside of the initial announcement was that it was supposed to be tied in with T-shirts and toys and that the production company was changed due to the original company having an "absence of plot elements".
• At one point, there was talk of a Dead Rising movie.
• The long-rumored Dead Space film seems to have faded away. The last mention of it was in 2011 when attached director D.J. Caruso announced it would be a prequel, and that he was looking over a script treatment. Since then, Visceral Games have indicated that they don't want to rush into a "cash grab adaptation", which is the likely reason for the holdup. Since then John Carpenter (yes, that John Carpenter) expressed great interest in directing the film. Then the original series of games ended with the third title, sending the franchise into temporary retirement, film and all. A remake of the original game was announced and released to much success in 2023, but time will tell if it's enough to revive the franchise, let alone lead to any more film attempts.
• Around in the late 2000s, Electronic Arts announced that a film adaptation of The Sims is in development at 20th Century Fox with producer John Davis and an animated series based on their title MySims is stated to be in the works at Film Roman. However, several years later, neither project ever materialized for unknown reasons.
• Rumors of a Devil May Cry movie being in production/already existing have been floating around since the release of the third game. Fan movies exist, but that seems to be where the trail ends. The idea of a live-action movie was directly quashed when Adi Shankar announced in 2018 he had purchased the rights to the franchise with the primary objective of making an animated series, and the secondary objective of ensuring Hollywood cannot make a live-action film.
• A film adaptation of Driver was in development throughout the 2000's. Initially announced by Impact Pictures to release alongside Driver 3, the film was constantly pushed back and switched hands to Rogue Pictures among a revolving door of screenwriters, eventually landing with Pulp Fiction writer Roger Avary. Avary intended to take liberties with the game's story, describing his script as "Grand Theft Auto set in Baghdad." with a plot about the son of the game's protagonist pursuing his father's killer in Iraq. The film ultimately died when executives would only give the film a $40 million dollar budget.
• The Gears of War film has hit many roadblocks. New Line slashed the film's budget and apparently trimmed back the epic plot elements, requiring a new script to be written. Also, Len Wiseman decided not to direct the film. As of 2011, no one had any idea if the film would come out at all.
  • New Line's rights eventually expired in 2016 and were promptly picked up by Universal. Production seems to be back on track, with Scott Steuber (who was hired back in May 2013) and Dylan Clark (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) attached as producers.
• Sony registered several domain names pertaining to a Grand Theft Auto movie in 2009. Nothing else was revealed after that.
• The Halo movie adaptation was talked about a great deal in the late 2000s, but nothing ever came to fruition. Mostly due to creative control and budgetary constraints/disputes. The resulting collapse of the initial project turned into District 9. Eventually, Showtime acquired the rights for a TV series, and after a production delay, it ended up seeing release as Halo (2022) on Paramount+.
  • This Wired article provides an in-depth view of the drama, and points out that the film's failure to materialize is likely due to Microsoft's inexperience in dealing with Hollywood politics, plus the problems that would be involved with it - minimizing the amount of CGI issues would be prohibitively expensive, and Hollywood has never done well with more-or-less silent protagonists.
• A film based on Heavy Rain had the rights purchased for it before the game itself was released. The last word about it was in 2011, when Deadwood writer David Milch was said to be writing the script for the film adaptation.
• Hunter: The Reckoning. Rumor has it the project entered development hell because Uwe Boll bought the film rights to the video game and when White Wolf found out just who was going to be adapting one of their properties for cinema, they rapidly put the kibosh on the project.
• A film adaptation of Kane & Lynch has been in varying states of development over the years. Early information had Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx picked to play Kane and Lynch, respectively. A leaked 2007 draft of the script analyzed by Kotaku was not received well by fans due to a number of changes from the game to the point of being In Name Only, such as Lynch being a ditzy TV Genius instead of an Ax-Crazy psychopath. Since then, the only news of the film was in late 2013, stating that Gerard Butler and Vin Diesel were in talks to play the lead roles and Skip Woods was writing the script.
• In 2014, it was announced that there would be a film adaptation of the 2013 hit The Last of Us, with the original game's creative director Neil Druckmann penning the screenplay. As of 2016, Druckmann mentioned that no work has been done for over a year and a half. The project was officially cancelled in early 2017.
• The film adaptation of Mass Effect has been stuck in limbo for a long time. After being announced as a project by Legendary Pictures in 2008, nothing moved forward for two years until it was announced that Mark Protosevich (Thor) would be writing the screenplay. In 2011, Protosevich talked about the film, their plans for the script... and then nothing for another year. Protosevich left the project in early 2012, and Morgan Davis Foehl was brought on to revise the screenplay nine months later before falling silent. In 2021, it was confirmed by BioWare's Mac Walters that the project had fallen apart due to disagreements if the adaptation should be a film or television series.
• A movie based off Mega Man was announced in September 2015, after Fox had registered several domain names for it a year prior. Two years later, it was revealed that Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish) would write and direct the movie. In August 2019, following the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney, many of their films that were in development during that time were cancelled following the failure of Dark Phoenix, with the Mega Man film being one of them (the rights have since fallen into the hands of producer Peter Chernin, who jumped ship to Netflix after the Disney merger and took the Mega Man movie rights and several other projects with him).
• In 2006, Hideo Kojima announced a film adaptation of Metal Gear Solid was in development by Sony Pictures. However, aside from the usual reasons for this trope (budget concerns, who to give the rights to), the fact that Kojima (understandably) was very picky about who should direct the movie caused more than a few hurdles. For a while it seemed like the movie was being scrapped, until Avi Arad (former CEO of Marvel Studios and producer of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's early days) came on board in 2013, reviving the project. A director (Jordan Vogt-Roberts of Kong: Skull Island fame) has been brought on board and has been meeting with Kojima himself on writing the script. Oscar Isaac was cast as Solid Snake on December 4, 2020, after previously expressing interest in the role, the first major announcement of any sort concerning the cast. However, there is no timetable set for the film due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Issac's schedule. Time will only tell if the movie ever will get off the ground.
• The rights to make a Metroid movie were sold to two unnamed producers in 2003, who then sold them to John Woo in 2005, with a 2006 release date. Since then, not a word on so much as possible casting has been released, and no one's sure if John Woo even still has the rights or not. Nintendo has stated that they killed the project and the rights likely reverted to them. While Jordan Vogt-Roberts has expressed a desire to direct the film, and both Ronda Rousey and Brie Larson are interested in the lead role, whether Metroid will be Saved from Development Hell or not remains to be seen.
• A film based on Minecraft was announced in early 2014. That October, Vu Bui stated that it wouldn't be completed until 2018; It was scheduled for a 2019 release that never happened. The movie has had several directors drop out of the project and had its producer, Jill Messick, commit suicide (thus being the final movie she worked on). On April 16, 2019, the Minecraft staff announced that the movie would be released on March 4, 2022, stating that it would take such a long time because "making a live-action, full-length feature film is really complicated." But then that release date was pulled from the schedule soon after, and there hasn’t been an update until over a month after the originally planned release date, when it was announced that Jason Momoa would star in the movie, and that Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite would direct the film. In April 2023, it was added back to the schedule for April 4th, 2025, but time will tell if this sticks or not.
• A Monkey Island film was in production for some time and got canceled. At most there is a Spiritual Adaptation in Pirates of the Caribbean, which the writers denied to have been a repurposed script.
• Production on Mortal Kombat: Devastation, the planned third movie for the Mortal Kombat film series, was seriously fraught. First, the disappointing performance of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation made the studio hesitant to make another movie. And then, when they decided to go through with it, the production got derailed when Hurricane Katrina hit, as the studio had been set up in New Orleans. The project was ultimately scrapped and in 2016, it was announced that James Wan would produce a rebooted film for Warner Bros., Mortal Kombat (2021).
• The Onimusha movie adaptation fell into this due to the death of Heath Ledger, who was supposed to have played Roberto Frois from Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams.
• Perfect Dark was announced in 2001 (later changed to a TV series, but still no word).
• Back in 2013, director J. J. Abrams and Valve talked about the idea of developing a film adaptation based on Portal and/or Half-Life, despite its confirmation by Abrams himself in this footage and by Clevver News. Both projects are very early in development and no studio has been attached to them yet.
• An adaptation of Rainbow Six with John Woo as director (based off the third installment, Lockdown) was announced way back in 2004. Nothing had been heard until 2021, long after Woo left the project, when the release of Without Remorse had star Michael B. Jordan open about taking the role with the intention of starring in a Rainbow Six film as a sequel. Sure enough, The Stinger shows Jordan's character proposing Team RAINBOW to senior military staff as a Sequel Hook but time will tell if the film finally gets made, and whether it will adapt the first novel/game, one of the sequels, or go in an original direction.
• A live-action/ stop motion hybrid film adaption of Ubisoft's Raving Rabbids was announced back in 2013 along with adaptions of other Ubisoft properties. Although said to be distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment and scripted by the writers of Robot Chicken, nothing has been officially announced since then.
• Brad Pitt was rumored to be interested in developing and starring in a film adaptation of Red Dead Redemption back in 2010, but since then there's been radio silence.
• Like the Crazy Taxi example above, Rent A Hero was one of several Sega properties that were announced to get a film adaptation; specifically, it came out of nowhere in Summer 2016. Steve Pink, the director of Hot Tub Time Machine, was supposed to direct it as the story of one guy who joins a hi-tech startup described as "Uber for heroes", so not very related to the original game that was very much a product of early 90s Japan.
• 50 Cent wanted to make a Saints Row movie around 2009. Nothing has happened since.
• Sony Pictures' film adaptation of the 2005 PlayStation 2 adventure game Shadow of the Colossus has announced back in 2009. with Kevin Misher, producer of The Scorpion King and The Interpreter, was at first negotiating to produce. On May 23, 2012, it was reported that Chronicle director Josh Trank would be directing the film adaptation. On September 4, 2014, the film might finally move forward to become a reality as Variety reports that Mama Andrés Muschietti (who happens to be a fellow fan of the game) will be directing the film along with Hanna writer Seth Lochhead penning the script after Trank has dropped out in the wake Fantastic Four (2015). As of 2015, no cast or release date has been announced.
• A Spy Hunter movie was advertised in the manual of the 2001 remake. The game Spy Hunter: Nowhere To Run was supposed to tie-in to this movie, but the film itself appears to be locked into this, if not cancelled outright.
• The Suffering was slated for a 2012 release, but nothing has ever appeared hinting that the project even began. Given that the only available info on the project is from 2005-7, it doesn't seem likely.
• Plans for a trilogy based on Tetris produced by Larry Kasanoff (the same man responsible for unleashing Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and Foodfight! onto the world) were announced in 2016, but nothing has come of the project. Instead Apple would end up producing their own Tetris film, but rather than adapt the game directly, they decided to instead chronicle the wild true story of how the game got out of Russia.
• Zombies Ate My Neighbors was going to get a movie adaptation in the early 2010s according to this article; however, since it was described as a "high school coming-of-age story", it's probably for the best that it ended up not being made.
• Two attempts were made to turn Soulcalibur into a movie. The first, in 2001, was to be directed by Sammo Hung, who had eyed fellow Peking Opera School classmate Jackie Chan to play the lead role (what role was unknown, although some presumed it to be Hwang). Unfortunately, Chan's schedule didn't allow for the role, and Hung lost interest, letting the rights lapse. Several years later, in 2007, Anthem Films acquired the rights to the film, and the description the studio gave was an In Name Only adaptation about two warriors tasked to destroy a sword that fell into the hands of an evil prince. Nothing followed the announcement, leading people to believe it too had been cancelled.
• Early 2018 saw Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production studio set to produce a Duke Nukem movie, with John Cena being eyed as the titular Duke. Cena, in interviews around the time, was open about wanting the role, but wanting to do the character justice. However, since that time, there has been no further news, and as of March 2021, no writers or directors are attached to any Duke related project.
• A sequel to Pokémon Detective Pikachu was announced four months before the film's release. Presumably thanks to the film not performing as strongly as the studio had hoped, nothing new has come out since. Co-star Justice Smith has stated in interviews that he's not sure whether or not the sequel is moving forward, and conflicts between Warner Bros. and franchise film rights holder Legendary Pictures have only further clouded prospects. However, it was reconfirmed in March 2023 that the project was still scheduled to be released.
• A Splinter Cell movie trailer was attached to Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. It was to be produced by Paramount, then nothing.
• Tomb Raider (2018) was already a successful rescue of a project that had been considered ever since a third Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was cancelled. But the sequel to that has been a victim, starting with the initially COVID-19 Pandemic as well as star Alicia Vikander’s pregnancy delaying the start of production and pulling the film from schedule. During the following two years, directors and writers were brought in, but in 2022 MGM's production rights lapsed for taking too long to make the sequel, so now a bidding war started for the next Tomb Raider, with Vikander no longer attached.

Miscellaneous Sequels, Remakes and Reboots

• Shortly after 28 Weeks Later was released, Danny Boyle indicated plans for a third installment, Twenty Eight Months Later, was in the works. Unfortunately, copyright issues mean it's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension has two of these: The sequel film Buckaroo Banzai vs. the World Crime League, which stalled out despite enthusiastic responses from the original cast, and an animated spinoff TV series on Fox, Buckaroo Banzai: Ancient Secrets and New Mysteries. At this point, they can both be considered dead. The DVD release of the original movie was this for about a decade, due to a complicated rights issue that was not resolved until the death of the license holder. Amazon later gained the right to possibly make a whole TV series out of it, and even got Kevin Smith on as the director, but that didn't quite work out either.
• The Alien Nation remake. Announced in 2015 by Fox, Jeff Nichols was announced as director the following year, with no news since then. Original screenwriter Rockne S. O’Bannon is set to regain the rights to the Alien Nation property in 2022 thanks to termination clauses in copyright law, meaning that if Fox owner Disney doesn't care enough about the IP to get the remake off the ground, Fox's franchise is dead by 2022 as O'Bannon will be able to shop the remake elsewhere.
• The third Alien vs. Predator film. It helps both franchises went their own ways again.
• All American Massacre was to be a spinoff/prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2; it would focus on the character Chop Top but also reveal the origins of the cannibalistic Sawyer family via flashback. Buckethead was to provide the score as well as portray Leatherface, Bill Mosely reprised his role as Chop Top, and William Hooper, son of the original film's director Tobe Hooper, directed and wrote the film. A trailer was released in 1998 with a scheduled release date of Halloween 1999. Filming wrapped in 2000, but there wasn't enough money to get the film through post-production. In 2011, Hooper set up a kickstarter to complete the film, but the campaign failed, and any rumors of the film still being worked on gradually died down since then.
• A fourth Austin Powers film was announced in 2005 but so far, nothing has come of it yet. Two cinematic failures starring Mike Myers haven't helped, and the April 2018 passing of cast member Verne Troyer (Mini-Me) makes this even less likely, yet as of late 2018, Myers still insists it's coming. Someday.
• The Bad Seed (2018), not counting the 1985 Made-for-TV Movie (in which, unlike the first film - but like the novel and play - the evil little girl's mother kills herself while the girl survives).
• The remake of Barbarella has been stuck here for a while. Back in 2008, Universal was gearing it up with Robert Rodriguez as the director. Rose McGowan was to take the role of Barbarella, but Universal freaked out over the high budget and they didn't think McGowan was right for the role. Rodriguez was not willing to make any changes, so he shopped the remake to other studios. Further problems came when his backers wanted Barbarella to be aimed for the German audience. Rodriguez didn't like that plan, so he finally gave up in May of 2009. Later, it was announced that Robert Luketic was to take over the director's chair, but production didn't really get off the ground. Now that the film's proposed producer, Dino De Laurentiis, has died, the remake now seems really unlikely despite rumors that Anne Hathaway is attached to the remake.
• Apparently, someone wanted to remake the odd sci-fi/comedy/satire Big Man Japan, a very unusual choice since it's firmly rooted in Japanese culture (and also contains some kind of jab at the USA in the end). As expected, nothing more than the announcement has ever surfaced.
• A Bio-Dome sequel has been discussed since 2007, in spite of the film being a critical and commercial failure. In 2017, Stephen Baldwin stated that him and Pauly Shore are still interested in the project, with the latter having the funding for production, but they need MGM's approval first.
• The Black Hole was going to have a remake courtesy of Joseph Kosinski, but it has apparently been shelved because it had too many similarities to Interstellar.
• Another remake of The Blob (1958) has reportedly been in the works for years with Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role. it was rumored to come out in 2016 but 2016 came and went with no Blob movie. That one was abandoned and only a few pieces of concept art are left of it, however at the beginning of 2024 news surfaced of yet another remake. It is apparently being directed by David Bruckner, who already has a history with remakes, being the director of 2022's Hellraiser.
• The Brazilian Job, the sequel to the 2003 remake of The Italian Job (2003) has been in the works since 2004 but was never finished due to the inability for the studio to agree on a finalized script. There have been rumors that a script was being considered in 2009, but nothing final. The project is currently still listed as being in development, but there's not even a projected year of seemingly been shelved release, so don't expect it anytime soon.
  • There are also rumors that one of the scripts for this film ended up becoming Fast Five, which is plausible, given that the plot for The Brazilian Job sounds almost identical to that film.
  • As of 2010, Word of God confirmed that the project is officially dead.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer remake. Warner Bros. purchased the rights to do the film in 2010, and earlier Vertigo Entertainment had expressed interest in doing a reboot film without series creator Joss Whedon to much controversy. It was also announced that the film would likely be a remake of the 1992 film and have nothing to do with the much better-received TV series with Heather Morris and Candice Accola both in talks for the title character, and Kristy Swanson expressing interest in a cameo. Whit Anderson had written a script that was rejected in 2011. That's the last we've heard of the project since.
• There was a Chopping Mall remake announced years ago. But so far nothing has come of it. IMDB says it's still "In Development".
• Not one but two remakes of C.H.U.D. were supposed to happen, one was originally supposed to be directed by Rob Zombie but he declined. The other was announced in 2008 with no set release date.
• A remake of A Clockwork Orange was originally announced in development, but due to the death of Heath Ledger (who had expressed great interest in playing Alex before the project was announced), it is unlikely that production will continue.
• The Clue remake, first announced in 2006. At first, it was announced as a straight remake of the 1985 comedy, then it wasn't, then Gore Verbinski joined the project, then it was a straight remake again, then it wasn't again. Hasbro soon parted ways on the project with Universal and went to 20th Century Fox with a new producing team, with Fox announcing the new film would be something of an international mystery that would span the globe, but to make a long story short^note Too late!, the film seems to be stranded here for the foreseeable future. In January 2018, Ryan Reynolds was cast as the main star, with Reynolds collaborators Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick penning the script. In September 2019, Jason Bateman was revealed as a possible candidate for directing the film.
• After the success of Crazy Rich Asians, the sequel "China Rich Girlfriend" has been greenlit. However, one of the screenwriters, Adele Lim, left the production due to a pay dispute when it was revealed that her co-screenwriter, Peter Chiarelli, was offered more than her. Later on, Amy Wang is set to write for the sequel instead. But production hasn't started due to director Jon M. Chu's commitment to his other film projects that were in pre-production.
• A reboot of Cube entitled Cubed was announced in 2016 but as of now is seemingly stuck here.
• The Dam Busters, a remake of the 1955 classic. Mel Gibson bought the rights in the late 1990s but never made much progress past rumors of filming in west England. Peter Jackson obtained the rights a few years ago and rumor has it that filming had begun in 2009. Then Jackson decided to scrap the film and restart in 3-D.
• The sixth Die Hard film. Initially titled Die Hardest and intended to be the Grand Finale to the series, the critical drubbing and underperforming box office of A Good Day to Die Hard was a likely cause of the film being placed on the backburner. It resurfaced a few years later with the title McClane, with a new plot that would cut between the present day and protagonist John McClane's first year as a police officer. Pre-production hit a major snag with Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox, and the failure of Dark Phoenix in 2019 caused Disney to cancel many of Fox's upcoming and in-development films, with McClane reportedly among the casualties. In 2022 Bruce Willis officially retired from acting following a diagnosis of aphasia and dementia; so any future Die Hard films would almost certainly have to be reboots.
• The sequel to Dog Soldiers, which was possibly derailed because of Gender Flip.
  • Announced for release on December 20, 2014, with further films coming, in March 2014. It hasn't happened.
• Double V Vega, a Quentin Tarantino film that would starred Michael Madsen and John Travolta as brothers Vic and Vincent Vega (from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction respectively), was proposed after the latter film was released, but went unmade due to Tarantino's involvement in other projects (such as Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds), which ultimately left the project unfilmable due to how old the actors have gotten since they originally played the characters.
• A sequel to Dude, Where's My Car? was rumored sometime after the release of the first film, but nothing more was heard afterward.
• The fourth Dungeons & Dragons (2000) movie — Hasbro sued Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema to get the series film rights back, upset that Warner did not let the rights lapse after the original film was so loose and out of touch with its source material that it flopped both critically and commercially. The fourth film was thought to have been canceled after the lawsuit was filed, but the three parties eventually settled. The fourth movie is now back in production, with Hasbro serving as a co-producer through Allspark Films and expecting to receive the rights back once Warner is finished with their fourth movie.
• A sequel for Eastern Promises was supposed to happen, with Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel reprising their roles, but in the spring of 2012, director David Cronenberg announced that the project had fallen apart.
• Edge of Tomorrow had its sequel greenlit, but aligning the schedules of director Doug Liman and stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt was an issue. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Blunt downright said the studio would probably think the movie was too expensive. And when the studio (Warner) was sued by one of the production companies (Village Roadshow), the lawsuit revealed they were actually developing a TV spin-off instead.
• The remake of The Entity.
• As of October 2013, it's the sequel to Evil Dead (2013). Fede Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues have walked away from the project alleging that it was dead. Which is weird because a few months prior, they claimed work was already started on the sequel, only to completely do a 180. Are they lying or what?
  • A sequel to Army of Darkness and a third crossover film that would bring the original film series to the same world as the remake series has also apparently been scrapped. The Army sequel alone may have been scrapped completely in favor of the Starz TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead instead that premiered in 2015. And now that the TV series has ended in 2018 and Bruce Campbell announced that the character of Ash has been retired, the probability to see him together with Mia from the remake is next to zero.
    • And then Campbell turns around and voices Ash in not one, but TWO separate video game projects, suggesting that perhaps he's merely done playing Ash ON FILM. But that still limits the possibility of future projects, and certainly chances of the crossover ever happening.
• A third Fletch movie has been in the works since 1997, with Kevin Smith once attached to direct and Ben Affleck and even Zach Braff for the title role. This Entertainment Weekly article has all the sordid details.
  • In 2022, Confess, Fletch was released with Jon Hamm starring in the titular role.
• The re-reboot of Friday the 13th appears to be dead. The film already had a turbulent time trying to get off the ground, which is detailed at length in this article, but the biggest blow came in February 2017 when Paramount not only stripped its October 13th release date, but halted production indefinitely as well. Legal and rights issues surrounding the franchise are not helping matters. The film died for good when the franchise rights reverted back to New Line Cinema in 2018. Whether a new movie will come out is still to be confirmed, but a prequel series called Crystal Lake has been announced.
• Get Smart 2 was announced in 2008 after the release of the first Get Smart film set for a release in the summer of 2010. Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Arkin all claimed they would return, but Carell stated several times later that he wasn't pleased with a script, and rewrites were in place.
• The Godfather, Part IV. Paramount has long wanted to make another sequel to The Godfather, despite the third film's mixed reception and Francis Ford Coppola's opposition. In the late '90s, Mario Puzo worked on a script patterned on the second film's parallel storylines: a modern-day segment focusing on Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) inheriting the Corleone family, and a flashback to the '30s showing Vito consolidating power in the Prohibition era with help from a young Sonny (with Leonardo DiCaprio mooted for the role). Puzo's death in 1999 scuttled the project, though his script was later adapted into Ed Falco's novel The Family Corleone. Paramount won rights to the Godfather franchise from Puzo's estate in a 2012 lawsuit, but there's no indication that a fourth installment's actually going forward. The most the franchise has gotten since then was a Director's Cut of Part III in 2020.
• The Great Khan, Sergei Bodrov's follow-up to the 2007 Mongol.
• Halloween
  • Halloween 9 seemed to have stalled. Once producer Moustapha Akkad died, the 9th film appeared to have died with him. Ironically, the remake of the first film got fast-tracked once he died. That means the fate of John Tate (Josh Hartnett) and Molly Cartwell (Michelle Williams), who were Put on a Bus at the end of Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later ("Drive down to the Beckers") will probably never be resolved. There was even a contest sponsored by Dimension Films at one point that would award one lucky fan with a bit of screen time in this movie. Needless to say, a winner was apparently announced. Said winner was shown on the 30th-anniversary documentary, including showing the announcement of her winning. She was an extra in the 2007 remake. Speaking of which, it was supposed to have a third installment at one point. Halloween 3D was announced with a 2012 release date before being shelved and canceled.
  • In February 2015, it was announced that Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan will be writing a new entry to the series along with Malek Akkad (son of Moustapha) and Matt Stein producing. It even went into pre-production as Halloween Returns, with its storyline supposedly connected to the original series, apparently as yet another direct sequel to Halloween II. It was delayed resulting from Melton and Dunstan's disagreements with the Weinsteins. Now the Halloween franchise has been dropped by Dimension and the Weinsteins, along with Melton and Dunstan's involvement. The rights then reverted back to Miramax, who teamed up with Blumhouse, Universal, John Carpenter himself, Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny McBride, and David Gordon Green for Halloween, a direct sequel to the 1978 film, therefore completely abandoning all projects mentioned above.
• The Highlander remake with Ryan Reynolds. The director who was attached eventually left the project due to Creative Differences.
• The Host (2006) was the highest-grossing Korean film ever at the time, so naturally, there were soon talks of a sequel and a remake. The sequel (or maybe a prequel) was supposed to be released in Summer 2012 as a 3D movie and apparently was about authorities denying the existence of the monster. The American remake was announced in 2008 with Gore Verbinski as producer and had a planned release date of 2011. Nothing more has been heard about either of them. On top of that, even the video game based on the film became vaporware as well.
• A Remake of the 1971 cult horror film I Drink Your Blood was announced in 2009 with a set 2011 release date. It all fell apart when the original's director David E. Durston passed away.
• A remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer was confirmed by Sony Pictures in 2014 with Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard writing the script, with the film being "high priority" and being set for a 2017 release. Nothing else was said until 2016 when Flanagan mentioned in a podcast interview that the film will be more of a reboot, not borrowing the story from the 1997 film or it's 1974 source novel by Lois Duncan, and that it would carry a $15-$20 million budget. Nothing has been whispered since.
• The Incredible Shrinking Man remake has been in preproduction for years with Eddie Murphy among the many people considered as possible candidates for the role of Scott Carey.
• The fifth Indiana Jones movie was left in limbo since as early as 2008, the release of the previous entry, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, despite frequent rumors by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Shia LaBeouf. Lucas and Spielberg reportedly had Creative Differences, and while Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012 led to some announcements that the movie would indeed be made, it wasn't until 2016 that a 2019 release date was officially slated. The radio silence was mired with script issues (which led David Koepp, Jon Kasdan and Dan Fogelman to leave the project), and many assumed that the movie was stuck in permanent limbo, especially due to conversation that Disney was in conflicts with Paramount over distribution rights. After many missed deadlines, the film was finally confirmed and proper production went forward in 2021, and while Spielberg had to drop out as director (James Mangold took over), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was officially unveiled with a trailer and release date of June 2023.
• The American adaptation of Infection.
• A live-action reboot of Inspector Gadget was announced in May 2015, with the planned film said not to share any ties to the 1999 film or its sequel. This is the only thing that's been heard about the project thus far.
• Multiple studios have tried to remake John Woo's The Killer (1989). The first attempt was by Tri-Star in 1992, with a screenplay by Walter Hill with Richard Gere and Denzel Washington in the lead roles. It fell through due to the producers getting skittish over the script's Ho Yay undertones. A second attempt was announced in 2007 with John H. Lee directing and Woo producing, but also fell through due to Lee's committments to other projects. In 2018, Universal announced it was moving forward with the film, with Woo returning to direct and Lupita Nyong'o in a leading role.
• Jumanji 2, which would have involved the Jumanji board, after being spotted in the ocean, uncovered by two girls from France, building on a scene at the end of the film. It was scrapped when Chris Van Allsburg wrote Zathura as a sequel to the book that inspired the movie, with the intent of making The Movie based on the book (which ironically is more of a Spiritual Successor). A Jumanji sequel eventually was made, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, but going a whole different way (the board game updates itself into a video game).
• In 2000, Mike Nichols announced he was remaking the British comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, starring Robin Williams (replacing Alec Guinness as the D'Ascoyne family) and Will Smith (in the Dennis Price role as the murderous heir). The project bounced around for several years, but a suitable script was never completed, while the director and stars worked on other projects instead. With both Nichols and Williams now deceased, any chance that the film would ever go into production seems to have vanished.
• As IMDB's trivia page for the film and a few other sites report, Columbia purchased the rights for a remake of Swedish comedy film Kopps, about a small town's police force, shortly after the film came out. Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Production was supposedly involved. But the film came out in 2003 and nothing more was heard about the remake since then.
• Lawrence of Arabia was only the last in a long line of proposed T.E. Lawrence biopics, stretching back to the 1920s. Many never got past the idea stage, but a few came close to production:
  • Alexander Korda personally contacted Lawrence about a film based on his Revolt in the Desert. After Lawrence's death in 1935, Korda spent several years developing the project: Walter Judd, Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier and Robert Donat were all possibles for Lawrence. By 1939 the movie was finally ready to shoot, until the outbreak of World War II scrubbed it. Supposedly, Winston Churchill personally intervened, telling Korda that he didn't want to alienate Turkey in the lead-in to war.
  • In the early '50s, Columbia Pictures approached numerous directors to adapt Seven Pillars of Wisdom: John Ford, Michael Powell and none other than David Lean among them. None seemed especially interested, though the project kicked around for several years, with such unlikely names as Alan Ladd and Burgess Meredith rumored to play Lawrence.
  • Meanwhile, the British Rank Organization developed their own Lawrence movie. The project got underway in the late '50s, with a screenplay by Terence Rattigan and Dirk Bogarde attached to play Lawrence. The movie was set to film in Iraq, before a military coup in 1958 derailed production. Rattigan reconfigured his script into a stage play, Ross, which was successful enough that producer Herbert Wilcox again tried bringing it to the screen. By this time, however, Sam Spiegel and David Lean were producing Lawrence of Arabia. After an exchange of legal threats and lawsuits, Wilcox dropped the project. Ross was finally adapted in 1970... as a low-budget BBC Made-for-TV Movie, starring a young Ian McKellen.
  • In early 2013, Roland Emmerich announced a Lawrence-focused miniseries, supposedly based on Michael Korda's Hero. There's been no news since that initial announcement. (Emmerich was asked about it in 2022, and said the project was going through rewrites)
• A sequel to the 1982 cult sci-fi movie Liquid Sky was announced in 2014 by its director, who also stated that the main actress was going to reprise her role after more than three decades. But no further news have ever surfaced about it.
• A remake of Little Shop of Horrors was announced in 2009, with a director attached to the project and purportedly having a darker tone than previous versions. No further information has surfaced in the following years since.
• Around 2003, Robert Zemeckis was planning to remake the William Castle film Macabre for Dark Castle Entertainment (a company he co-founded with Joel Silver) at some point in between the productions of The Polar Express and Beowulf. After Zemeckis got heavily into motion capture, he abandoned the project and eventually left Dark Castle to start Imagemovers Digital. Nothing has been heard about the project since.
• At the San Diego Comic-Con 2011 director Robert Rodriguez stated that he intends for Machete to become a trilogy. The 2013-sequel, Machete Kills even includes a fake trailer for Machete Kills Again... In Space and ends with a Sequel Hook that sends the titular hero in fact into space. However, the intended threequel till date never came to be, while both fans and even main actor Danny Trejo campaign hard to make it happen. Other than vague updates by both Trejo and Rodriguez about working to make it happen, nothing new is coming out from that movie till date.
• According to this 2014 article, a remake of the slasher film Maniac Cop was going to be produced by Nicolas Winding Refn and written by Ed Brubaker. Later on, Larry Cohen, writer of the original movie, stated that the remake was not getting made; however, still in 2018 it was reported that the Maniac Cop remake was still being made but with "a completely different tone". Nothing more has been said about it since then.
• The long-mooted My Fair Lady remake. When first announced in 2008, Columbia Pictures attached Danny Boyle to direct and Emma Thompson write the screenplay, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Henry Higgins and Keira Knightley as Eliza Doolittle. By 2009, Boyle had dropped out of the project, followed by Day-Lewis and Knightley. Then John Madden was announced as director, with Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan starring. Then Madden left the project after Columbia demanded Madden cast Hugh Grant as Higgins instead of Firth. Then, after Firth won Best Actor for The King's Speech in 2011 he was reattached to star... by which time Mulligan was tied up shooting Shame and The Great Gatsby (2013). Finally, in 2012 CBS Films threatened to sue Columbia over rights to Lerner and Loewe's musical. As of fall 2014, the movie still hasn't been made, and it doesn't seem likely anytime soon.
• National Treasure 3 was stuck in this for almost 15 years. As of May 2020, the script has been finished and a Disney+ series is also in development. However, nothing else has been announced.
• A sequel to New Jack City has been in development since 1991, when it was announced to begin filming for a Christmas 1992 release. Since then, the project has been off-and-on in development. Most recently, there were plans to make it straight-to-DVD but not much is known yet.
• The remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street was supposed to start a new franchise, with stars Jackie Earle Haley and Rooney Mara signed on for sequels, but the critical and commercial disappointment of the film stalled future installments, and sent Freddy back to the graveyard once again. Whispers of a new Nightmare film still pop up, but no such film is known to be in development.
• On a similar note, Oh! Heavenly Dog was going to get a reboot with the director of Alvin and the Chipmunks directing. Nothing has been heard since.
• There were at least two sequels planned for The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure: The Oogieloves In The Big Family Adventure and The Oogieloves In The Big Holiday Adventure. The plot summary for the former film was on AMC Theatres' website for some time, suggesting that the film was completed, and revealed that it was about the characters taking a road trip.
• Mel Gibson announced that a sequel to The Passion of the Christ was in the works in 2016. It was initially planned to be released in 2021, but was pushed back to 2022. Currently, it has a target release of 2024.
• Hey Paul Reubens, when are you going to make those new Pee-wee Herman movies? At last report, two sequels were being written back-to-back but Herman's stage show has stalled production of said movies.
  • He stated in 2013 that a new TV show, and a new film, could happen in 2014. Late that year, Reubens announced the new film would be produced by Judd Apatow, and in February 2015, he stated it would be exclusive to Netflix, under the title Pee-wee's Big Holiday.
• Italian film Perfetti sconosciuti (Perfect Strangers) has entered the Guinness Book of Records for being the movie with the most foreign remakes in history: there are 25 as of 2023, made everywhere from Mexico to Vietnam and Iceland. However, an American remake is still stuck in development hell. It was being optioned by The Weinstein Company, but, thanks to the founder's notorious troubles, the project ground to a halt. 2019 was the last time anyone heard of it.
• Phantasm series, yet another horror franchise with a sequel stuck in Development Hell. The fifth (and supposedly final) film was announced as having been completed in March 2014, but no release date was given at the time.
• In the early 2010s there were talks of a remake of the cult classic Canadian 1988 horror film Pin, but nothing more was heard about it since then.
• The second sequel to Prometheus (after Alien: Covenant) is on ice after Covenant failed to impress at the box office. That hasn't stopped Ridley Scott from talking about it, but with Disney taking over 20th Century Fox, even Scott isn't sure if the sequel will ever get off the ground.
• Even after the under-performance of Reign of Fire, actors from the film still indicated that there still might be a sequel in the works. That was back in 2002.
• The remake of Revenge of the Nerds. Fanboys director Kyle Newman was given the greenlight to direct a remake back in 2007. Unfortunately, the studio kept cutting the budget, and the only college in Georgia that would let them film was an all-girls school, as the other colleges had previously had bad experiences with film crews. The studios also kept on making demands for things as trivial as the main characters' wardrobe, then after the all-girls school found out that the film was more "risque" then the crew had let on, they were kicked out and had no money left to finish the movie, so the studio pulled the plug on the remake and nothing has been heard ever since.
• A sequel to the 2014 RoboCop reboot was planned, only to be shelved for several years due to the reboot flopping massively in the United States. Den of Geek reported in 2015 that Sony was still intent on making the sequel, but several years later it was reported that the sequel was dead, as the rights to the RoboCop franchise reverted back to MGM. A second reboot, said to take place after the first film and thus rendering the original sequels non-canon, was announced simultaneously with District 9's Neill Blomkamp attached to direct.
• Sometime in the late 2000s, a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was announced but it never happened due to protests from the movie's cult followers, who detested the idea that MTV/Disney Channel teen idols would be cast in the lead roles. A live broadcast remake, The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again, was released in 2016 on Fox, which mostly got a middling reception.
• Various project based on Scarface (1983), detailed in this Collider article, have bounced around Hollywood for decades. The first notable attempt was by hip-hop artist Cuban Link who pitched a sequel starring himself as the son of Tony Montana, but it stalled out. Since 2011, Universal has had a laundry list of names come and go in pursuit of a reboot including Antoine Fuqua, Diego Luna, Luca Guadagnino, and The Coen Brothers, with no end in sight.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • A third Scooby-Doo film was planned and green-lit during production of the second film, and Matthew Lillard and Linda Cardellini signed on to reprise their roles. After the second film performed less than expected (wasn't a flop though, it still made money, just not as much as the studio hoped), Warner Bros. canceled the project. Five years later, two made-for-TV prequels were made with a different cast. There are now talks of a reboot of the series, in addition to a theatrical animated film (which was eventually released as SCOOB! in 2020).
  • Speaking of the prequels, there was supposed to be a third one of those as well, with the entire cast signed on. However, the project has gone nowhere. It might have to do with the negative reception The Curse of the Lake Monster received.
• Development of the third Sherlock Holmes has been long delayed due to issues on the business side. Producer Joel Silver left the series's distributor, Warner Bros., for Universal after the second film's release in 2011. WB wasn't happy that the film underperformed at the box office with two expensive but bankable stars in Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law but Silver blamed it, in part, on what he saw as poor marketing on WB's end. Also throwing a wrench in the process are Downey and Law's starring commitments to more lucrative franchises (the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Fantastic Beasts respectively) that's made it hard to get the two of them in the same place at the same time. Although progress has been made in getting it off the ground and it was given a December 2021 release (which it still technically has), it was delayed again by about a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with production hoping to start in 2022. Despite Dexter Fletcher replacing Guy Richie at one point and a rumored plot of Homes and Watson taking on a case in America, as of 2023 it remains trapped, with recent interviews from Law and Richie saying they're waiting on if RDJ is interested in making the movie to see if it ever gets made.
• Star Trek has had several unproduced projects, many of which never got past the proposal stage, although there were some movie projects that had significant preproduction work done before being shelved:
  • Star Trek: Planet of the Titans was one of several ideas to revive the live-action franchise in The '70s, but the only one to gain enough traction to move beyond the earliest drafts. Eventually, the project stalled and was ultimately shelved in favor of a new TV series, Star Trek: Phase II, though after extensive pre-production work had been done on the series, it too was shelved in favor of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Two study models of a delta-winged Enterprise created for Planet of the Titans (based on designs by Ken Adam and Ralph McQuarrie) were ultimately used as background ships in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • The proposed Starfleet Academy prequel movie (alternately known as Star Trek: The First Adventure and Star Trek: The Academy Years) that Harve Bennett had hoped to make as the sixth film was shelved in favor of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. However, the prevailing feeling around Paramount was that the 25th-anniversary movie should feature the original cast, and there were concerns that recasting the classic characters would've been too great of a risk. The original cast was also not happy about being replaced. Some helped spread the false rumor that the film was to be a spoof in the footsteps of Police Academy. In addition, an Academy film would've required all-new sets, costumes, and models, all of which would've been time-consuming to create, while a movie set in the film series' "present" era allowed the reuse of existing assets, making it a lot easier for the film to make the desired December 1991 release date. Bennett would try to sell the project again over the next several years, but Paramount ended up using only the most bare-bones part of the premise - Kirk, Spock, and McCoy meeting at the Academy - in J. J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009).
  • The third sequel to the 2009 film movie has been put on ice after the box office underperformance of Star Trek Beyond. Although Abrams and Paramount were confident in another installment, the financial failure of Beyond and many of Paramount's tentpole films led the studio to focus more on developing smaller budget movies. In 2018, Paramount greenlit both a main sequel directed by S. J. Clarkson and a spin-off directed by Quentin Tarantino. However, to accommodate the smaller budget of the sequel, the cast had their salaries reduced significantly, leading to Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth dropping since they were originally promised lucrative pay raises that were agreed upon prior to Beyond's release. Abrams also vacated his role as producer and creative consultant after signing on to direct The Rise of Skywalker, which lost its original director and undergone massive re-writes following the death of Carrie Fisher. The death of cast member Anton Yelchin (Chekov) also dampened much enthusiasm for future sequels. While the Tarantino project ultimately stalled, Paramount continued pursuing a Star Trek 4, and in 2022 announced WandaVision director Matt Shankman to be the in the director’s chair as well as a 2023 release date, though the old cast had yet to be confirmed. Then Shankman left the project to replace Jon Watts on the MCU reboot of Fantastic Four, and the film was subsequently pulled off the schedule, putting it back in limbo for now.
• In 2010, Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro announced rival production labels (Raimi at Lionsgate, del Toro at Disney) that would produce horror films for younger audiences. Raimi's label even announced its first project (a remake of the 2007 Swedish sci-fi film The Substitute) but neither label got past talks due to Raimi's busy schedule and Disney cutting its production slate.
• Tongue of Fury, the sequel to Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, was announced since the end of the first film in 2002. However, no word of it has ever surfaced. Word of God states that Steve Oedekerk is still sifting through a huge library of Hong Kong martial arts films to find the right scenes to lift. There were also rumors of a possible 2010 release.
• In 2012, a sequel to Twins (1988) titled Triplets was revealed to be in development, and the plot would revolve around Julius and Vincent finding out about their long lost brother, whom Eddie Murphy would play. No further news has been made about the film since.
• Universal Horror:
  • A remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon has been in on-and-off development since at least the early 1980s when John Landis tried to launch a production helmed by the director of the original movie, Jack Arnold. In 1995, Peter Jackson was given a choice between helming a new Creature movie or doing King Kong. This fan site shows a stream of news and rumors about a remake going back over ten years. Stephen Sommers, Guillermo del Toro, Brett Rattner, and a crossover with Hellboy, of all things, have all been mentioned at one time or another (plus Gary Ross, who wrote a script as his father co-wrote the original). The latest would-be director is Breck Eisner (director of The Crazies and son of Michael Eisner), but who knows when or if a remake will actually materialize? Again, news of it appeared in 2016, and Scarlett Johansson was in talks to play the female lead, but nothing has been whispered since. Some of Guillermo del Toro's rejected ideas for a Creature remake were incorporated into his Best Picture-winning film The Shape of Water.
  • Universal announced the Dark Universe in July 2014, with The Mummy as the first installment. Other films will include The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and yes, Creature from the Black Lagoon. A Van Helsing reboot set in the same universe was also mentioned. However, the poor critical reception and box office flopping of The Mummy put the future of the Dark Universe in question, with some even wondering if the whole thing will be a Stillborn Franchise. The Bride of Frankenstein remake had a set release date of February 14, 2019, with Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters and Beauty and the Beast) attached as director and Javier Bardem attached to star (with the studio in talks with Angelina Jolie as the Bride), but it was delayed indefinitely right before filming was supposed to begin. The Dark Universe was officially announced as cancelled in January 2019, with a series of separate and independent filmmaker-driven films taking its place (The Invisible Man (2020) would see release in 2020 as a standalone film).
• Around 2005, a modern-day remake of The Wild Bunch was announced, to be directed by David Ayer. Years passed without further developments. Then in early 2013 news outlets reported a similar project featuring Will Smith in production.
• In the late 2000s, Disney had been planning sequels to surprise hits Wild Hogs and The Proposal but canceled both after the box office failure of Old Dogs. While the former had gone through some development (even having a plot be revealed), the latter seems to have never gotten past talks nor was it known what it would have been about.
• The remake of The Wiz, which was rumored to star Aaliyah and R&B singer Ginuwine. This was back in 1999-2000. But the idea seemed to stall even before Aaliyah's untimely death.
  • In 2015, NBC aired a live version of the musical, which appears to be unrelated, but makes the idea of another theatrical film less likely.
• A third sequel to the horror movie Xtro has been in the works since the 90s with information finally been released in 2019.
• Train to Busan had an American remake announced in 2018, with James Wan attached as the producer. News about it was virtually nonexistent until 2021, which was when it picked up a director (Timo Tjahjanto), screenwriter (Gary Dauberman), and the title The Last Train to New York. It was originally slated to be released on April 21, 2023, but it was dropped from Warner Bros.' schedule and seems to have been delayed indefinitely.
• Drive-Away Dolls: The film project was first announced in 2007. It took until 2024 to be released, and went through many different actors being attached, then leaving, along with its title changing.

Western Animation Adaptations

• In late 2016, it was announced that Paramount had signed on for a live-action adaptation of Captain Planet and the Planeteers, with Leonardo DiCaprio, a known environmentalist, acting as producer. One of the main writers, Glen Powell, confirmed he was writing the script during a September 2018 interview and described the tone as "subversive" and "fun". No further news has emerged since that time.
• The Robert Rodriguez helmed remake of Fire & Ice was announced back in 2010 with Rodriguez claiming production had started in 2014. Nothing has been heard since that time.
• A Gargoyles script was floated around Touchstone Pictures during the mid-90s for adaptation. It would have been a radical departure from the series bordering on In Name Only (for instance, the Manhattan Clan were all humans turned into Gargoyles and all had names before awakening in the modern). Production was halted when Touchstone executive Todd Garner was told that the titular Gargoyles would need to be portrayed by actors in suits, which convinced him the effects technology wasn't there yet to realize his vision. In 2018, Jordan Peele went to Disney to pitch his own adaptation, but was told Disney had no interest in the property at the time and rebuffed his proposal.
• On a similar note, back in 2011, Rodriguez had announced at San Diego Comic-Con he was going to helm a remake of Heavy Metal. 2017 saw head publisher of Heavy Metal Kevin Eastman express hope that progress would begin on the film, but as of March 2021 there is no additional information.
• A live-action film based on The Jetsons has been in development hell for a very long time. Paramount purchased the rights to do one in 1985 but sold them to Universal Studios a few years later. The result was the animated film, Jetsons: The Movie. A live-action film was later discussed in 1995, but nothing happened. In 2001, Rob Minkoff was attached to direct a live-action Jetsons film, but in 2003, it was announced that its script was being reworked and Adam Shankman in talks to direct. In 2004, the script went through another rewrite with Sam Harper, and Shankman still attached to direct. It once again fizzled but was resurrected again in 2006 with Adam F. Goldberg now attached to write the screenplay and Robert Rodriguez entering negotiations with Universal to direct a CGI film for a 2009 release, but the project stalled. In 2012, Kanye West, of all people, was rumored to be involved in a Jetsons film project in some way, though this was later confirmed to just be a preliminary idea. The film rights are now in Warner Bros.' hands. In 2015, they announced that they planned on producing another animated Jetsons film with Matt Lieberman of SourceFed writing the script. Unfortunately, no live-action film is known to be in development at the moment.
• Jonny Quest is another Hanna-Barbera property whose live action adaptation has been stuck in development hell for decades. It was first announced in the early 90s when Turner began seriously pushing a revival of the franchise. Richard Donner expressed interest in directing, with production beginning in 1995 and filming scheduled for 1996, but it never happened. The project was revived in 2006 with Zac Efron attached to star as Jonny Quest and Dwayne Johnson attached to star as Race Bannon, but once again, the project fizzled. In 2016, Robert Rodriguez became the next name to be attached to direct a live-action Jonny Quest film, and Chris McKay (director of The LEGO Batman Movie) was attached in 2018, but time will tell if it ever actually does get off the ground.
• A Johnny Bravo movie was confirmed to be in development from Warner Bros. as a star vehicle for Dwayne Johnson. That was back in 2002, and nothing has been heard since.
• Nickelodeon had been planning films for The Legend of Korra and Dora the Explorer since early 2015, with Dora and the Lost City of Gold finally being Saved from Development Hell in 2019. There's still no info yet about Korra, though.
• In 2008, there were plans to make a Looney Tunes live-action/CGI hybrid Christmas movie starring Mike Myers as Marvin the Martian, which was billed for a release on 7 October 2011. It was scrapped in 2010 when Warner Bros. removed it from their schedule, and leaked footage appeared online in 2012.
• Mattel has made numerous attempts at a second live-action Masters of the Universe film. As far back as 2008, Justin Silver was attached to the film, only for it to undergo rewrites over the course of the next decade, with occasional overtures made to actors, such as Dolph Lundgren being entertained for the role of King Randor and Chris Hemsworth turning the film down for He-Man's perceived similarities to Thor. Finally, in 2019, Noah Centieno announced on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that he had signed on for the role of He-Man/Prince Adam, and Mattel's licensing expo booth that year promised a March 2021 release with a "Marvel-level budget" according to a conference call. However, Sony, the film's distributor, pulled Masters from its March 2021 release date, with no word as to when the film would start production. Finally, a February 2021 interview with Centineo to promote the upcoming Black Adam film with Dwayne Johnson had him announce he was no longer attached to Masters, leaving the film's fate uncertain.

Other

• The film adaptation of Green Day's Rock Opera American Idiot has been in development since 2005. Several scripts have been written, and Tom Hanks has expressed interest in producing the film, but nothing definitive has yet been announced. When asked if the movie was a truth, lie, or mystery, drummer Tre Cool responded that it was "a true mystery".
• James Rolfe, following the production and release of his debut feature Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, has discussed many times the intention for his second feature to be an original, less budget/resource-intensive venture into horror. In the time since, in addition to continuously producing The Angry Video Game Nerd and other ventures on Cinemassacre, he became a father of two, so development has been continuously held back, and as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, it's been postponed indefinitely.
• A biopic about Baron Gustaf Mannerheim, Marshal of Finland during World War II, was announced in 2000, with Finnish director Renny Harlin attached. The filming has been postponed many times due to budgetary issues. Harlin finally pulled out in May 2011, but it is unclear whether the project will go on without him.
• In the early days of the New Atheism movement, there was some buzz around Brian Flemming's plans for a film called The Beast, an atheist parable about a Christian high-school student named Danielle, who finds out her missing Bibilical scholar father discovered proof that Jesus Christ never existed, and subsquently goes on a quest to spread the truth while fighting off fundamentalist Christians trying to keep it a secret. The film was scheduled for release on June 6, 2006, but the release date came and went without the film surfacing, and nothing has been heard of the project since.
• In 2019, Mark Harmon bought the rights to make a film based on a Texas Monthly article about the murder of Sports Dad Bill Butterfield at the hands of his abused son Lance. Since the announcement, no news about it has surfaced as of 2022.
• The Snoop Dogg movie Black Ice has been on and off in development for the latter part of the decade. Snoop said in an interview that scheduling and communication issues have caused the delays, but insists that it'll see the light of day.
• This ESPN the Magazine article gives an inside account of the process of getting stuck in Development Hell. David Fleming's tried for years to get his novel Breaker Boys, about an early NFL team whose championship was revoked after bitter lobbying by richer rival team owners, onto the big screen. Fleming sees this as a larger failure than most — because the movie isn't getting made, the NFL won't be forced to admit its mistake and restore the stolen championship.
  • Ultimately, the project was sunk by the failure of Leatherheads, which studios believed signified there was no money to be made in a movie about football in the 1920s. As the article mentions, Leatherheads was itself stuck in development hell until George Clooney stepped into the picture. Fleming's ESPN colleague Rick Reilly wrote the original screenplay in 1991... and it hit theaters in 2008. It's a point of contention between Fleming and Reilly as to who got the worse deal.
• After proving to be a dynamic duo in the film classics Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, Hollywood big-shots Robert Redford and Paul Newman tried for years to do another film that would feature them together. Hope for that third movie died along with Newman in 2008.
• In 2016, producer Jonathan Sothcott announced he had bought the rights to the Carry On franchise and would make a new set of films. Subsequently, Brian Baker bought the rights in 2019 and announced he would be filming three new installments back-to-back, however production was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of Barbara Windsor in 2020, and nothing has been heard of the projects since.
• A film based off Christian the lion was announced in 2008 by Sony Pictures, with Neal Moritz producing. After trudging along for about five years, it got a writer and director before the Sony hack shook up Sony management, with newly-installed motion picture group chairman Tom Rothman deciding not to move forward with it. It was shelved indefinitely when Moritz jumped ship to Paramount a couple of years later due to continued conflict with Rothman, and with both the writer and director having moved on, no progress has been made.
• The Chronicles of Rick Roll, a fantasy comedy featuring the stars of various early internet memes such as Tay Zonday, Numa Numa Guy, David After Dentist and Chad Vader, among many others (though ironically, not Rick Astley, the star and namesake of the meme it was named for), was announced back in 2013 and was expected to be released in 2014, but little has been heard of the project since.
• There was a fair bit of buzz in 2010 over a film The Wachowskis were developing with the working title of Cobalt Neural 9, reported to be a Mockumentary from a hundred years in the future that would have been about a homosexual romance between an American soldier and an Iraqi during the Iraq War. It was reported in 2012 that they had invested $5 million into it and would probably fund it entirely themselves because no studio would buy it, but that was the last news about it.
• A film called Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill, starring Sacha Baron Cohen and written by Tina Fey, was supposed to come out around 2007 or 2008, but never materalized.
• The Dionaea House, a story told virally over the internet from 2004 to 2006, abruptly stops on several cliffhangers at different points in time, apparently because Warner Bros. purchased rights for a film adaptation. According to eBay's film listing, it was supposed to come out in 2007. IMDB once had a listing for a 2010 release (under the name The Residents for some reason), but even that fell through, and the creator later admitted he felt the project was all but dead.
• In 1960, Robert F. Kennedy published a nonfiction book called The Enemy Within about his role in the Senate's investigation of organized crime and labor corruption. After his brother became President and RFK became Attorney General, he hoped to adapt it into a film, approaching producer Jerry Wald. Wald commissioned Budd Schulberg, screenwriter of the similarly-themed On the Waterfront to write a screenplay, which he did in 1962 in close collaboration with Kennedy; Waterfront director Elia Kazan was attached to direct, and there were even talks with Paul Newman to play Kennedy himself. Just as production seemed ready to start, Wald died of a heart attack, Kazan fell out with Schulberg over changes to the script, and the project fell into limbo. While several studios considered producing it afterward, threats from the Teamsters and other unions which Kennedy's book depicted in less-than-flattering terms, made producers reluctant to film it, while Kennedy's own interest in the project eventually waned. As late as 1969, the year after Kennedy's assassination, there were still rumors of a production by Columbia Pictures, but nothing ever came of them.
• In 2010, Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures announced a horror movie based on the internet hoax/viral marketing/meme "Ever Dream This Man?", that was to be directed by Bryan Bertino, who directed The Strangers in 2008. They even bought the thisman.org website for a short while as a means to promote the film, but that was the last that anyone ever heard of it.
• Giraffes On Horseback Salad was a film pitch by Salvador Dalí for a romantic comedy starring Harpo Marx as the leading man. MGM Studio chief Louis B. Mayer, already not a fan of the Marxes, felt the premise was too weird for mainstream audiences and turned it down. It was forgotten for almost 80 years, languishing in Dali's notebook and being only briefly mentioned in scattered interviews, until Josh Frank gathered a team to revive it as a graphic novel instead.
• Gray State was to be a dystopian action film about a Second American Revolution against a One World Order, largely rooted in the conservative/libertarian fears and conspiracy theories of its creator, David Crowley. Unfortunately, given Crowley's double murder-suicide of his family, the film will likely never see the light of day. The only thing to come from it has been a Werner Herzog-produced documentary titled A Gray State, which focused on Crowley and what drove him over the edge.
• Guillermo del Toro examples:
  • It wasn't until making Pan's Labyrinth that he finally got a studio to okay his script for At the Mountains of Madness — a script that apparently had no romantic subplot, a Bittersweet Ending and very vague monsters, none of which are things producers want. It was also going to have Ron Perlman, apparently; he joked that del Toro will let him pick the sort of jar he gets to float in. But Universal Studios gave up on it in 2011, and del Toro gave up on it altogether in 2012.
  • He was also planning an adaptation of Domu: A Child's Dream, by Katsuhiro Otomo (better known for AKIRA), which has apparently been called off due to rights issues.
• A few years ago, there were competing development projects about Hannibal Barca. One with Denzel Washington, another with Vin Diesel. Either one could have been interesting. But so far, nothing.
• There were several movies about Harry Houdini that were planned but never made:
  • In 1932, RKO Pictures considered making a biopic, with Paul Muni in the lead. For legal reasons though, Houdini's name could not be used, so Harry Houdini became Harry Pinetti. Titled Now You See It, the first screenplay was written by Fulton Oursler, who knew Houdini personally. Oursler's screenplay followed Houdini's life very loosely and invented many fictional episodes. Then Kubec Glasmon was brought in to write a new screenplay. The project was then shelved, but in 1936 the Pinetti name resurfaced in treatment for a movie called Man of Magic, which had nothing to do with Houdini. That movie was also never made.
  • In the mid-30s Houdini's widow, Bess Houdini, approached Columbia Pictures about a Houdini biopic. However, the studio's president, Harry Cohn, rejected it, claiming, that Houdini's life was not dramatic enough. Then Mrs. Houdini approached Paramount, which in 1936 announced Houdini the Great, with a screenplay by Frank O’Connor and Dore Schary as producer. Schary later commissioned another screenplay by Pierre Collings. Paramount however eventually dropped the project and in 1944 Schary offered it to David O. Selznick. Selznick wanted Alfred Hitchcock to direct it and Cary Grant or Joseph Cotten to star in it, but the Master of Suspense rejected it. Then William Dieterle was attached to the project as director and Garry Moore as Houdini, but the project soon died out.
  • Producer Ray Stark tried to make his own Houdini biopic for many years. In 1969, he announced a stage musical about the King of Handcuffs under the title Hocus Pocus. By 1974 this turned into a movie called The Magic Man: The Story of Houdini, with James Bridges as director and James Caan as Houdini. However, the movie went through several screenwriters, as Stark was unsatisfied with them. At one point Stark wanted to turn the movie into a time travel fantasy. Then in the early-90s Stark managed to sign on Robert Zemeckis as director, with Universal and Columbia co-producing the movie. However there was still no script, so in 1992 Zemeckis dropped out. By 1997 Stark managed to get a screenplay written by Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson and Paul Verhoeven signed on as a director, but he soon left the project. Up until his death in 2004, Ray Stark claimed, that he was in talks with Ang Lee to direct and Tom Cruise to star in his Houdini biopic, but the project went to the grave with him.
  • In 1988 a movie called Harry's Back! was announced, which would have starred Tony Curtis as a man turning up in present-day New York and claiming to be Houdini. The movie was never made. Similarly announced, but never made was The Dead of Night, which would have paired Houdini with Aleister Crowley. The project never went beyond an ad in a 1990 issue of Variety.
• On January 2015, Sanrio announced a Hello Kitty film with a tentative release date of 2019. However, Sanrio didn't even start production until they licensed the rights to New Line Cinema and Warner Bros., and Flynn Pictures Company (New Line and Flynn Pictures also has the movie rights to other Sanrio Characters) in March 2019. With Beau Flynn as the producer and Wendy Jacobson as executive producer. By March 2021, the movie was revealed to be a live-action/CGI hybrid alongside revealing Jennifer Coyle and Leo Matsuda as the film's directors. Since Discovery fully required Warner Media (now Warner Bros. Discovery) on April 9th, 2022, the current state of a Hello Kitty feature film and other Sanrio films remains uncertain for now.
• Universal announced a live-action LEGO Hero Factory movie project back in 2012, and despite the other major LEGO-inspired film becoming a huge success, it hasn't been discussed any further. With the toy line being canceled in response to the 2015 return of its much more famous predecessor, it is doubtful that it will ever be made.
• No less than two Jim Henson biopics were placed in development in the 2008-2011 period but never got off the ground. Henson, written by Robert D. Slane, appears to have been a standard bio. The Muppet Man, written by Australian actor/writer Christopher Weekes, was a more unorthodox story that was going to parallel Henson's life with Muppet scenes, and even have Muppet characters interact with Henson. In both cases, Disney refused to give permission to use the characters, which was really odd for The Muppet Man, since the Muppets' creators and previous owners The Jim Henson Company had actually bought the screenplay after it topped the annual Black List for the best unproduced screenplays. Jim Carrey, Leonardo DiCaprio and Hugh Jackman were all said to be in the running to play Henson. The Henson organization wasn't too thrilled with the way The Muppet Man delved into the collapse of his marriage, and couldn't work out a compromise with Weekes. The screenplay still circulated, with bloggers and Muppet fans registering mixed reactions over it, noting that Henson never sentimentalized his characters or regarded them as real, and that the script was a bit sloppy, with misspellings, factual errors and Americans using Australian slang terms. The Henson biopic concept may yet get Saved from Development Hell, since in 2021 Disney announced they would make one called Muppet Man (minus the "The", and not connected to the Weekes screenplay), apparently based around the launch of The Muppet Show.
• In 2015, Peter 'Stoney' Emshwiller crowdfunded Later That Same Life, a documentary where he unearthed footage of his 18-year-old-self interviewing him when he was - at the time - 56. However, despite a comment on the trailer in 2018 assuring the film was still in development despite unexpected personal and health issues, nothing about the project has been announced since. The fact that there hasn't been a blog post for years and RocketHub, the site used for crowdfunding, no longer even exists doesn't bode well for the project being delivered any time soon, if at all.
• Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed has announced plans for a follow-up documentary focusing on the accusations against Michael Jackson by Jordan Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, however due to the film's controversy the sequel seems to have been shelved.
• The re-release of Let It Be. Contrary to popular belief, neither Paul McCartney nor Ringo Starr have tried to block its re-release, nor are they opposed to the idea of it being re-released — in fact, McCartney WANTS it to be, and has openly wondered why it hasn't been. The reluctance seems to instead lie with Apple Corps, as McCartney has stated he's brought it up several times to the board, only for them to nix the idea each time for one reason or another. However, when Paul announced what would become The Beatles: Get Back, a longer version of the sessions that resulted in Let It Be, he said a remastered version was probable.
• Fox acquired the film rights to both Magic: The Gathering and Play-Doh from Hasbro in 2014. Since then, no other word has come out from either project, and both projects appear to be shelved in the aftermath of Fox's acquisiton by Disney.
  • The former film appears to be dead, as Netflix announced an anime Magic: The Gathering series in June 2019 that will be helmed by The Russo Brothers. The latter film is still in limbo.
• A Biopic about Mary Shelley titled Mary Shelley's Monster staring Sophie Turner fell to this. Between no new casting information coming up about the film since its August 2014 announcement and the production falling to Schedule Slip (it was supposed to begin in Fall of 2014 but was delayed to January 2015, but still failed to start), it never came to fruition. The 2017 movie simply titled Mary Shelley starring Elle Fanning probably didn't help this movie's chances either.
• In 2007, a film version of The Mayor of Castro Street, a biography of Harvey Milk, was announced. This was derailed by the successful release of Milk the following year.
• Michael Jackson-related examples:
  • GK Films announced a movie based on Michael Jackson's Thriller video, with Kenny Ortega, set to direct and Jeremy Garelick set to write a script that would have had a lot of Adaptation Expansion, in 2010.
  • Jackson's estate was shopping around a Biopic in late 2011, but nothing's been heard of it since. Given that his rise to superstardom was already covered (if sugarcoated) by the Jacksons-sanctioned (and since ran into the ground by VH-1) 1992 Made-for-TV Movie Jacksons: An American Dream, and that his estate apparently doesn't want to bring up the scandals and misfortunes that dominated his later years, there haven't been any takers.
• A Milli Vanilli biopic has been in this state for years, dating back to 2007 screenplay written by fan Jeff Nathanson (who was also interested in directing at some point). In February 2021, it was announced that Brett Ratner would be directing the project, making it Ratner's first directorial movie since both Hercules (2014), and his accusations of sexual harassment in 2017.
• A Blue Man Group movie entitled Mind Blast, in which the original performers enter a creatively congested person to help them express themselves, was announced in 2011, and that was the last time anyone heard about it.
• The Minds of Billy Milligan, the true story of a convicted felon with multiple personalities and the landmark struggle to free him from prison, was adapted into a screenplay called A Crowded Room by Todd Graff in something like the late 1970s. Dozens of actors, producers, and directors including James Cameron (who wrote a second screenplay) and Steven Soderbergh have signed onto the project and quit, after which Leonardo DiCaprio picked up the rights. Di Caprio has long expressed an interest in writing, producing, and/or starring in the film (the name of which has since changed to The Crowded Room), but nothing more has been heard of it since 2016.
• Momo, an Internet horror meme linked to a supposed curse that caused people to commit suicide (actually based on a picture of a statue by a Japanese artist), was to be the basis for at least two movies. One is an untitled project produced by Orion Pictures, and no other news surfaced about it. The other is titled GETAWAY and according to IMDb has entered production and has the typical premise of a bunch of teenagers in a cabin in the middle of nowhere telling each other scary stories and urban legends. Still not much else is known about it.
• Nicole & O.J., a true crime film about the murder of O. J. Simpson's wife Nicole Brown that takes the view that Simpson was, in fact, innocent. Director Joshua Newton claims to have discovered shocking new evidence that exonerates OJ, and the film got the endorsement of several people who knew him in real life. Boris Kodjoe was cast as OJ, British actress Charlotte Kirk played Nicole Brown, and principal photography was being done in Bulgaria (inverting California Doubling because the crew actually recreated OJ's house inside and out)...and absolutely nothing has been heard of the project since then.
• A film about Hiroshima bombing survivor Sadako Sasaki, titled One Thousand Paper Cranes, was announced to be in development in 2019, with Evan Rachel Wood cast as Eleanor Coerr, the journalist who published a children's book about her. When the news drew backlash from Asian-Americans critical of the focus on a white American woman in a Japanese girl's story, director Richard Raymond claimed in response that he was working with the Sasakis' input and the film would be in Japanese with Japanese actors. Other than some reports that Jim Sturgess and Shinobu Terajima were also cast in unspecified roles in the film, nothing else has been heard about it or its production since.
• Pinkville, which is about the My Lai Massacre.
• The Rifts movie. Jerry Bruckheimer picked up the right in 2004, and has been renewing the option every year, but doesn't seem to have done anything with it yet.
• In 2006 it was announced that Martin Scorsese would direct an adaptation of Edmund Morris's biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, written by Nicholas Meyer and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Roosevelt. Ever since it's been on hiatus, with little evidence that the project ever developed beyond the idea stage. Scorsese put Rise on hold for other projects, before ultimately dropping out as director. Scorsese has said that he's interested in producing the film if someone else would direct, but as of yet, no one's taken him up on the offer
• A biopic of silent film comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle has been in this state for about three decades. Like the aforementioned A Confederacy of Dunces, it had John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley lined up to star in it shortly before their respective deaths. No word has come out of it since.
• The Italian parody movie The Silence of the Hams by comedian Ezio Greggio has near the end a poster for Jurassic Pork, directed by... Ezio Greggio. It turned out that it wasn't just another one of the movie's many sight gags and parodies, but Greggio actually wanted to film it, and thus decided to promote it ahead of time. However, thanks to various pre-production problems, and the fact that in the meantime another Jurassic Park spoof, Chicken Park, was released in Italy, Jurassic Pork ended up not being made.
• In 2011, Sony Pictures had purchased a Roland Emmerich pitch named Singularity, a science fiction film about a man composed of nanomachines. It suffered several delays over the following decade, mostly regarding the script, with co-writer Harald Kloser even saying the idea for Moonfall was brought up in what was supposed to be a writing session for Singularity. And given during promotion of Moonfall Emmerich did not bring up Singularity as a future project, it can be assumed it won't start production any time sooner.
• Hasbro has attempted multiple times since The '90s to give Stretch Armstrong his own movie. Proposals varied wildly, from a When You Coming Home, Dad? comedy to a Darker and Edgier action tentpole. Actors considered include Danny DeVito, Jackie Chan, and Taylor Lautner. Lautner even received an animatic demonstrating how his stretching powers could apply to a set piece. Hasbro ultimately had more luck adapting Stretch Armstrong for the small screen; Netflix gave him his own cartoon in 2017, starring Scott Menville.
• The Sky Is Falling has a reputation as one of the greatest screenplays never filmed. Drew McWeeney wrote about this script from The '90s in an August 2013 Hitfix.com article about films that never made it: Two priests Go Mad from the Revelation of God's nonexistence and become Ax-Crazy, and now the challenge for the authorities is to both stop their rampage and keep the physical proof of this revelation from becoming known to the rest of the world, lest further mayhem ensues. It's little to no wonder New Line Cinema didn't go through with it.
• The Story of Bonnie and Clyde has been delayed for several years. After Hilary Duff, who was cast as Bonnie, became pregnant, the producers quickly replaced both leads, fearing that the film would be delayed further if they waited for Duff to be available. That was back in 2011, and the film has yet to enter production. Given the December 2013 release of the A&E miniseries, Bonnie and Clyde, starring Holliday Grainger and Emile Hirsch (which may or may not have ever been connected to the Hilary Duff remake), a feature film remake seems unlikely anytime soon.
  • Films about the Outlaw Couple tend to attract this. An independent project on the pair attempted to get off the ground during The '90s, and even got as far as having footage shot for it, but was unable to secure enough funding to complete the film. There were whispers of another attempt at a film around The New '10s, but nothing has come of it so far. At most there was The Highwaymen, based on the Rangers in pursuit rather than the couple.
• As hinted above, just about every Terry Gilliam film experiences Development Hell one way or another. Says Eric Idle on Terry Gilliam productions, "Go and see them by all means — but to be in them, fucking madness!"
  • Following the success of The Fisher King, Gilliam and Richard LaGravenese worked on a script called The Defective Detective, which centered on a cop getting trapped in a child's fantasy world. Nicolas Cage was considered to play the lead, but Paramount didn't give the project the go-ahead. While Gilliam still has plans to make the film and hinted at it for years, it's currently on the back burner.
  • Gilliam has toyed with making Theseus and The Minotaur ever since The '70s, though it is still stuck in script phase.
  • Gilliam also wanted to direct an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities with Mel Gibson, but Gibson dropping out to make Braveheart and budget disputes prevented this from happening. Liam Neeson was going to replace Gibson.
• In 2015 animation blog Cartoon Brew published an article about a live action/CG hybrid movie starring The California Raisins, the ad mascots/cartoon characters/fictional singers from the 80s. It had a planned release for late 2016 or Spring 2017, but no further news have surfaced about it.
• In the late 80s, Ridley Scott was set to direct a Carolco Pictures produced sci-fi horror movie entitled The Train. Described as Alien on a futuristic subway train featuring designs by H. R. Giger, the film's production was cancelled when Scott dropped out due to creative differences. A few years later, the film (renamed ISOBAR) was revived by Carolco Pictures and was set to star Sylvester Stallone and Kim Basinger with Roland Emmerich directing. However right before shooting was set to start, Carolco Pictures collapsed due to the box office failure of Cutthroat Island and the film has remained stuck in development hell ever since.
• 20th Century Fox optioned William Monahan's script Tripoli in 2001, depicting the Barbary Pirate Wars. After Monahan's 2006 Oscar win for The Departed its production was announced and would be directed by Ridley Scott and featuring Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves, and Ben Kingsley. Despite periodic claims of future release dates, it still hasn't been made.
• Tulia is about an attorney who works on behalf of a group of local black men who are wrongly convicted of their involvement in a drug ring. Likely the politically-charged nature of the story, based on an actual event, has derailed this project.
• An adaptation of "Twisting My Melon", the autobiography of Shaun Ryder, lead singer of Happy Mondays has been in development since 2013, when Ryder himself announced that ITV were looking to adapt it, and he mentioned that Danny Brocklehurst was set to write the screenplay. By the end of the year, it was switched to a TV series and was formally announced by ITV. In 2019, NME reported that the idea went back to being a movie, with Matt Greenhalgh set to direct and Jack O'Connell announced to star as Shaun Ryder. Filming was planned for early 2020, but the COVID-19 Pandemic may have cancelled it. As of 2024, nothing has been heard of the project since.
• Numerous attempts to make a biopic about Vince McMahon have stalled due to lack of funding or objections from the WWE itself. In 2017, Tristar bought the rights to a script titled Pandemonium, INC which the WWE eventually bought itself to ensure the film couldn't be made without heavy modifications. Excerpts of the script were eventually leaked, and few objected to WWE buying the script. Some, such as Jim Cornette, when he reviewed the script on his podcast, theorized the inaccuracies were so egregious they could allow the wrestlers or their families to sue for defamation. A few examples include portraying Roddy Piper as a drunken felon Vince recruited, rather than a regular for Jim Crockett Promotions, and most of the members of the National Wrestling Alliance as gangsters willing to kill promoters that step out of line. Most egregiously, at the start of the movie, Vincent J. McMahon, Vince's father, freely admits to killing a promoter working for him. As of November 2020, Tristar is no longer involved, as the WWE announced during a conference call they had inked a deal with Netflix to make a Vince biopic in conjunction with WWE Studios. This project has no connection to the earlier Pandemonium, INC script.
• Since at least the early 1990s, Roger Daltrey of The Who has been attempting to put a biopic of his late drummer bandmate Keith Moon on the big screen. Robert Downey Jr. was once considered for the lead role before, in Daltrey's words, he read the script and did everything in it. Mike Myers was teased all throughout the 2000s to be playing the man himself, but after its intended release day in 2007 passed, nothing has come of it. Currently, IMDB lists the film as "Untitled Keith Moon Project", with Mike Myers still attached to the title role.
• Kaiju Gaiden was a crowdfunded documentary meant to raise awareness on obscure, independently-produced kaiju movies, which began production in mid-2014. Despite clearing its $25,000 Kickstarter goal by over $5,000, its progress quickly stagnated. The project director was removed in early 2016 when it became apparent he was a conman who took the money and ran, but the main producer vowed to continue production on his own. However, updates from him and the project's Facebook page ceased in mid-2018. His personal Facebook page resumed activity in late 2022 without mentioning Kaiju Gaiden, but it was eventually discovered in early 2023 that the producer had actually been in prison for participation in a child porn distribution ring, a revelation that almost certainly put the final nail in the coffin for the film.
• Will Smith was once reported to be starring in a Sword and Sandal epic about the Nubian pharaoh Taharqa called The Last Pharaoh, with Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace penning the script. This was in 2008, and nothing else was heard of it afterwards.

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