Literature / The Greatest Movies You'll Never See

"Making a movie is like getting on a stagecoach. At first, you're hoping for a pleasant journey. After a while, you're just hoping you get there."

—Steven Spielberg, quoted in the introduction

The Greatest Movies You'll Never See: Unseen Masterpieces by the World's Greatest Directors is a 2013 book by Simon Braund about movies that were either never released, never completed or in numerous cases never even started, and what went wrong.

Contents:

• Chapter 1: The Twenties-The Fifties
• Chapter 2: The Sixties
• Chapter 3: The Seventies
• Chapter 4: The Eighties
• Chapter 5: The Nineties
• Chapter 6: The Two Thousands
• Not Coming Soon

"The Greatest Tropes You'll Never See"

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: Invoked. Who Killed Bambi?, which would have been a Russ Meyer-directed film about the Sex Pistols, would have ended with Johnny Rotten Breaking the Fourth Wall by looking directly into the camera and asking, "Ever get the feeling you're Being Watched?" Rotten would end the final Sex Pistols concert, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA on January 14, 1978, by asking the crowd, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night," dropping the microphone and walking off stage.
• Alien Invasion: Ray Harryhausen's abandoned adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and Steven Spielberg's Night Skies. See Lighter and Softer below.
• Alliterative Title: David Lynch's Ronnie Rocket.
• American Title: Type 2. In 1930, Sergei Eisenstein wanted to film an adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: From the "Not Coming Soon" appendix, about the various failed attempts to film an adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces:
  "Look at the statistics: John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley (actors attached to the project)- dead; Natasha Lyonne (actress attached to the project)- Lohan-esque career derailment; New Orleans (city attached to the project)- decimated by Hurricane Katrina; Jo Beth Bolton (Louisiana Film Commissioner attached to the project)- murdered; Will Ferrell (actor attached to the project)- made Blades of Glory (2007) instead."
• Artificial Stupidity: Frank or Francis, which is on the surface about an online feud between a critic and a screenwriter, would have included a disembodied robotic head that was programmed to write the perfect screenplay, the mass appeal of which would have been matched by its complete lack of artistic integrity.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: It's suggested that this is the major obstacle against Frank Or Francis getting produced.
  "After all, what industry would fund a project that sets out to expose it as shallow, venal and ethically bankrupt?"
• Box Office Bomb: Invoked. The fact that the 2012 John Carter failed means that an Animated Adaptation of A Princess of Mars, considered going back to the 1930s, won't happen.
• Character Title: Carl Theodor Dreyer's Jesus, Federico Fellini's Il Viaggio Di G. Mastorna, Orson Welles' Don Quixote, among many others.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: Romance of The Pink Panther would have been about Inspector Clouseau falling in love with one.
• Creative Differences: Invoked a few times.
• Development Hell: Invoked throughout, of course.
• Dueling Works: Invoked by Stanley Kubrick, since the release of Schindler's List led to him abandoning The Aryan Papers since he didn't think that audiences could handle two movies about The Holocaust in the same year.
• Either/Or Title: Frank or Francis
• Executive Meddling: Invoked many times. As just one example, the David O. Russell film Nailed was shut down and taken away from him right before the most crucial scene could be filmed. The film was later released as Accidental Love in 2015, two years after the book was published, and was promoted as a Romantic Comedy instead of the political Satire of the American health care system that it was intended to be. Russell disowned the film and is credited as "Stephen Greene," which follows in the tradition of Alan Smithee.
• Historical Domain Character: Both Charlie Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick wanted to make films about Napoléon Bonaparte.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Screenwriter Christopher Hampton notes that David Lean's intended production of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo could have been made for Warner Bros. in 1987 if Lean hadn't set such exacting standards for himself and everyone around him. Instead, Lean passed away at the age of 83 on April 16, 1991 after Columbia Pictures pulled the plug on the project, making it a quite literal Creator Killer.
• Jesus: The Early Years: Carl Theodor Dreyer's Jesus was intended as a human portrayal.
• Let's See YOU Do Better!: Alejandro Jodorowsky, who had attempted to film an adaptation of Dune during the 1970s, said that he felt relieved when he saw David Lynch's adaptation and discovered that Lynch couldn't make the material work either.
• Lighter and Softer: While making Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg's concept for Night Skies started leaning in this direction, leading to him turning the project into the blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
• Live-Action Adaptation: Tim Burton's Superman Lives, Darren Aronofsky's Batman: Year One, David Fincher's Black Hole, Francis Ford Coppola's Pinocchio..
• The Mafia: The subject of Potsdamer Platz.
• Mononymous Biopic Title: Carl Theodor Dreyer's Jesus, Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon.
• The Musical: Frank Or Francis would have been one.
• Name and Name: Leo McCarey's abandoned The Bible adaptation Adam and Eve.
• The Noun and the Noun: The Captain and the Shark
• The Plague: The Hot Zone, which would have been a fact-based story about Ebola centered around an infected Maniac Monkey.
• Questioning Title?: Who Killed Bambi?
• Real Life Writes the Plot: More accurately, real life often destroys the project. As just one example, in 2001, Francis Ford Coppola was starting Megalopolis, a film he'd been trying to make since 1984, when the 9/11 attacks made a film about the rebuilding of an idealized New York City an impossibility.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Moon Over Miami, an intended 1982 Louis Malle film about the Abscam scandal.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Invoked regarding the intended James Bond film Warhead.
• Screwed by the Network: Invoked several times.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Jerry Lewis told producer Nathan Wachsberger that he wasn't the right person to star in The Day the Clown Cried. Then Lewis made the movie, which, by all accounts, proved Lewis right.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Invoked with The Day The Clown Cried, since, at the time the book was published, it was the only film that had actually been completed, but remained unreleased.
• Shrug of God: Invoked. Roger Ebert is quoted about the script he wrote for Who Killed Bambi?:
  "I can't discuss what I wrote, why I wrote it or what I should or shouldn't have written. Frankly, I have no idea."
• Threatening Shark: The Captain and the Shark, which would have told the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis from World War II.
• Troperiffic: It's amazing how many tropes can be found in a book about so many unmade films.
• Troubled Production: Invoked throughout, of course.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Invoked a few times. It's mentioned that Alfred Hitchcock's abandoned 1960s Serial Killer project Kaleidoscope would seem dated today, citing Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Hannibal Lecter and the Saw movies.
• Video Game Movies Suck: Invoked/discussed at the start of the article about Neill Blomkamp's attempt at making a film based on the Halo video game series.
  "Video games don't have the greatest track record when it comes to being transformed into film. There have been occasional hits, like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and the Resident Evil (2002) franchise (2002-present)- but, even when financially successful, these films tend to be vilified by the very fans they're seeking to attract. Halo, for a while, looked like being different."
• What Could Have Been: Invoked, as it's the whole point of the book.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Salvador Dalí, as the book explains why his intended collaboration with the Marx Brothers, Giraffes on Horseback Salads, wouldn't have worked. Dalí didn't understand that what made the Brothers' act work was that their craziness was set against a backdrop of utter normalcy, but that they would disappear in an environment where everyone was crazy.