The Best Movies Never Made: Lost Projects from Christopher Nolan, William Friedkin, and More

Christopher Nolan’s Howard Hughes Biopic

Nolan began writing a biographical drama about the billionaire tycoon and filmmaker Howard Hughes shortly after he made his major 2002 Hollywood studio debut with the Warner Bros. thriller “Insomnia.” The “Dunkirk” Oscar nominee told The Daily Beast in 2007 that the script for his Hughes biopic was the best thing he’d written, and pre-production got far enough along that Jim Carrey circled the role of Hughes (Nolan said Hughes was the role the comedian was “born to play.”) The project died once Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator” got ahead of Nolan in the production cycle. Scorsese cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes and Nolan did not want to make a competing biopic on the same subject. The director dropped his Hughes biopic and decided to reunite with Warner Bros. to direct its Batman reboot “Batman Begins.” —ZS

William Friedkin’s “The Devil’s Triangle”

In the greenish afterglow of his wildly successful “The Exorcist,” William Friedkin turned to the skies and plotted a path to making a UFO flick, tentatively titled “The Devil’s Triangle.” Unidentified aerial phenomena are buzzy enough these days that it’s easy to imagine Friedkin coming up with something fairly spectacular based on theme alone. But the film also had top talent attached with Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, and Charlton Heston playing men trapped in the Bermuda Triangle. The production of “Sorcerer” ultimately overran the endeavor, and “The Devil’s Triangle” was abandoned. —AF

Bette Middler as Mae West (as Directed by William Friedkin)

Development execs at HBO Films had the brilliant idea to cast musical comedy icon Bette Midler as bawdy Hollywood legend Mae West in a film aptly titled “Mae West” in 2013. They topped those smarts with a plan to have William Friedkin executive produce and direct a script written by Harvey Fierstein. The project never materialized, but reportedly would have charted West’s rise to big screen stardom through her raunchy live performances and their legal and social ramifications. —AF

“Barbie” Written by Diablo Cody

Known for “Juno” and “Jennifer’s Body,” Oscar winner Diablo Cody was one of many screenwriters approached by Mattel to adapt Barbie for the big screen, before the toy company ultimately settled on Greta Gerwig’s vision. Cody never turned in her take on the famed doll brand, telling GQ that she just “couldn’t figure it out.” Still, intrigue around what she might have made persists. 

“I think I know why I shit the bed: When I was first hired for this, I don’t think the culture had not embraced the femme or the bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet,” Cody said to GQ. “If you look up ‘Barbie’ on TikTok you’ll find this wonderful subculture that celebrates the feminine, but in 2014, taking this skinny blonde white doll and making her into a heroine was a tall order.”

“I heard endless references to ‘The Lego Movie’ in development, and it created a problem for me because they had done it so well,” the writer continued. “Any time I came up with something meta, it was too much like what they had done. It was a roadblock for me, but now enough time has passed that they can just cast [‘The Lego Movie’ actor] Will Ferrell as the antagonist in a real-life ‘Barbie’ movie and nobody cares.” —AF

“Scream 3” Starring Matthew Lillard

“Scream” (2022) may have brought back Skeet Ulrich’s Billy Loomis without his famed conterpart, but Stu Macher remains a favorite among fans of Wes Craven’s slasher franchise. The filmmaker even had plans to feature Matthew Lillard’s beloved villain from the original film in its second sequel, 2000’s “Scream 3”: a tortured production that ultimately resulted in the series weakest installment.

The would-be script raised Macher from the dead (“It was just a TV? Right? You’d think he’d SURVIVE,” Lillard once tweeted of his character’s death) and focused on a “Heathers”-esque school massacre ochestrated by Ghostface trainees working on the infamous killer’s ghoulish guidance. Craven reportedly threw those plans out becase of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which occurred the month before production was set to begin.

“They changed everything,” Lillard recalled for the Bob Bendick podcast in 2010. “Took the script, threw it to the side, bought me out, and I never did the third one.” —AF

Spike Lee’s Jackie Robinson Biopic

Spike Lee gave cinephiles the ultimate gift during the pandemic in 2020 by dropping the full screenplay for his unmade biopic about baseball icon Jackie Robinson. A decades-long passion project for Lee, the script was based on Robinson’s autobiography “I Never Had It Made.”

“We’ve all had a lot of time to think about stuff, our life, what happened, what didn’t happen. And I began to think about one of my dream projects,” Lee said in a video accompanying the release of the screenplay. “I wrote a script for Jackie Robinson. I wanted Denzel to play Jackie, but Denzel said he was too old. And I pulled this script out of the vault. And so, I’m gonna share this script with you. And also — don’t worry about if you don’t like baseball, sports. This is a great American story. Never got made, but I wanna share this script with you…It’s the fifth draft, 1996…Hope you enjoy it. If you don’t, that’s alright, too.” —ZS

David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” Sequel

David Cronenberg’s gangster drama “Eastern Promises” earned Viggo Mortensen an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, and the story was strong enough to lure the filmmaker into planning a follow-up project. Production was eyeing an October 2012 start date, but Focus Features ultimately pulled the plug on the sequel. 

“It was something I really wanted to explore because it was the first time I had ever been tempted to do a sequel because I felt I wasn’t finished with the character of Nikolia, played by Viggo Mortensen, and Kirill played by Vincent Cassel,” Cronenberg told The Playlist. “I really wanted to see Nikolia go back to Russia, because one of the things I wanted in the first movie was that you see a bunch of Russians in London but you never see them in Russia. In other words, you experience their exile and they are trying to recreate some of Russia within London…“In the sequel, we would see Nikolai go to Russia and there would be Russian elements and so on and so on. And [original screenwriter] Steve Knight wrote a lovely script.” —ZS

Steven Spielberg’s “Ghost Stories,” Starring Tom Cruise

Steven Spielberg directed Tom Cruise in “Minority Report” and “War of the Worlds,” and their working relationship was originally set to continue with a third project titled “Ghost Stories.” Cruise was tapped in 2002 to reunite with Spielberg in the World War II drama thriller, which the actor was also planning to produce. “Ghost Stories” was based on Hampton Sides’ book about American survivors of the Bataan death march who endured three years in a Japanese prison camp. The project was going to be Cruise and Spielberg’s “Minority Report” follow-up, but projects such as “Catch Me If You Can” and “War of the Worlds” took priority until “Ghost Stories” was put on the back burner permanently. —ZS

Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp, and Guillermo del Toro’s “Halo” Movie

After dazzling the world with his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Peter Jackson next sought to oversee the film adaptation of the wildly popular video game series “Halo.” Jackson was executive producing a movie from a script by Alex Garland, who would later find great success in the sci-fi genre with directorial efforts “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation.” Directors came and went from the “Halo” movie, including Guillermo del Toro and Neill Blomkamp, who could have made his feature directorial debut with “Halo.” When the project died, Blomkamp moved on to his breakthrough “District 9.” “Halo” premiered as a television series in 2022 on Paramount+. —ZS

Sylvester Stallone’s Edgar Allen Poe Movie

Sylvester Stallone has been trying to get a movie about Edgar Allan Poe off the ground for nearly 30 years. As the writer-director-actor once said, “What fascinates me about Poe is that he was such an iconoclast. It’s a story for every young man or woman who sees themselves as a bit outside the box, or has been ostracized during their life as an oddball or too eccentric. It didn’t work for him either…His work was too hip for the room…but he developed the modern mystery story. He was also one of the great cryptologists; there were very few codes he couldn’t crack. He was just an extraordinary guy.”

While Stallone originally wanted to play Poe himself, he later recruited Robert Downey Jr. to star in the title role. “It has [to] be like Downey, I designed it for Downey,” Stallone explained. “Perhaps I could re-work the script. [Maybe] Johnny Depp. It needs a very special actor like that.”

The project got far enough long where Downey Jr. read the script and was impressed, telling Screen Rant in 2009, “Stallone wrote a great script that he wants to direct about Edgar Allan Poe.” Nearly 15 years later, the project has yet to move forward. —ZS

Patty Jenkins’ ‘Sweetheart’

Patty Jenkins took a 14-year hiatus between feature films “Monster” and “Wonder Woman,” but it was not by her own design. The filmmaker famously was going to direct “Thor 2” before creative differences distanced her from Marvel Studios. Another intriguing project that went unmade was “Sweetheart,” a female assassin movie that Jenkins came on board as director in May 2014. The movie’s script from Jack Stanley made the Black List and centered around a female assassin who plans to leave the killing business only to get pulled back after her high school reunion. —ZS

Darren Aronofsky’s “Batman: Year One”

Darren Aronofsky has often flirted with major tentpole properties, be it a Wolverine movie with Hugh Jackman or “Watchmen” before Zack Snyder came on board, but one that has long piqued the interest of moviegoers is “Batman: Year One.” Aronofsky was announced in 2000 to be directing an adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic arc, with Miller writing the script and Aronofsky’s regular cinematographer Matthew Libatique serving as DP. Aronofsky was coming off the one-two punch of “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream” and was going to make his studio debut with the Warner Bros.-backed “Batman” movie. The studio was intent on rebooting the “Batman” movie franchise after the poor reception of 1997’s “Batman and Robin,” but Aronofsky eventually left the project because of scheduling conflicts and the seeds of development got reshaped into Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.” —ZS

Charlie Kaufman and Guillermo del Toro’s “Slaughterhouse Five”

Guillermo del Toro has long talked about making an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 classic “Slaughterhouse Five.” The “Pan’s Labyrinth” director told The Telegraph in 2013 that he was interested in diving deep into Vonnegut’s alien race known as the Trafalmadorians; the only problem was that del Toro’s collaborator Charlie Kaufman struggled to turn around a script. “Charlie and I talked for about an hour-and-a-half and came up with a perfect way of doing the book,” del Toro said. “It’s just a catch-22. The studio will make it when it’s my next movie, but how can I commit to it being my next movie until there’s a screenplay? Charlie Kaufman is a very expensive writer! I’ll work it out.” —ZS

David Lynch’s “Ronnie Rocket”

David Lynch got started on “Ronnie Rocket” not long after the breakout success of his 1977 feature debut “Erasherhead.” The planned follow-up movie followed a one-legged detective who enters another dimension and gets stalked by a three-foot tall dwarf who can control electricity. Unsurprisingly, Lynch struggled to find a studio that would take a chance on such a bizarre story. The director put “Ronnie Rocket” on hold and went more mainstream with “The Elephant Man,” but he has often returned to trying to get “Ronnie Rocket” made. Different production companies came and went — including De Laurentiis Entertainment Group and American Zoetrope — while Michael J. Anderson (The Man From Another Place in “Twin Peaks”) was even cast in the title role. Alas, Lynch has never gotten “Ronnie Rocket” past development. —ZS

Martin Scorsese’s “Dino”

Martin Scorsese has long wanted to make a Dean Martin biopic titled “Dino.” The director bought the rights to Nick Toches’ book of the same name way back in 1992 and brought on his “Goodfellas” and “Casino” screenwriter Nicolas Pileggi to write the screenplay. Rumor had it Scorsese was ready to cast “Dino” sometime around 1997 and was planning to cast Tom Hanks as Martin and John Travolta as Frank Sinatra, plus Hugh Grant, Adam Sandler, and Jim Carrey in supporting roles. Scheduling conflicts and budget negotiations between Scorsese and Warner Bros. delayed the project, so Scorsese went off to make “Gangs of New York” with Miramax instead. “Gangs” ended up being a lengthy production and by the time Scorsese was finished Warner Bros. had dropped “Dino” from development. —ZS

Lynne Ramsay’s “Jane Got A Gun”

The behind-the-scenes drama on “Jane Got A Gun” made headlines in 2013 when director Lynne Ramsay refused to show up on the first day of production and then dropped out of the movie after spending a year in development. Rumor has it Lynne feuded with producer Scott Steindorff over the shooting schedule and, most importantly, control of the final cut. Steindorff quickly brought Gavin O’Connor on to direct, but the final product was delayed numerous times by The Weinstein Company and passed over by critics upon release. —ZS

Guillermo del Toro’s “At the Mountains of Madness”

Perhaps Guillermo del Toro’s most devastating lost project is “At the Mountains of Madness”: an adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft novella that was for years del Toro’s passion project. The movie was being developed at Universal with some heavyweight producers attached (including James Cameron), but a key creative disagreement derailed the horror film from ever happening. As del Toro told Collider, “We thought we had a very good, safe package. It was $150 million, Tom Cruise and James Cameron producing, ILM doing the effects, here’s the art, this is the concept, because I really think big-scale horror would be great. But there was a difference of opinion; the studio didn’t think so. The R [rating] was what made it. If ‘Mountains’ had been PG-13, or I had said PG-13 … I’m too much of a Boy Scout, I should have lied, but I didn’t.” —ZS

Spike Lee’s “Save Us Joe Louis”

One of Spike Lee’s passion projects has always been “Save Us Joe Louis”: a drama about the rivalry between the eponymous African-American boxer and German fighter Max Schmelling that took place just before World War II. “On the Waterfront” screenwriter Budd Schulberg worked on a script for the movie and Lee was attached to direct as early as 2001. The director went on to make “25th Hour” and “Inside Man,” but he maintained that “Joe Louis” would always be shot. Lee has cited David Lean as a source of directorial inspiration for the project. It seemed to be moving forward in a big way when Terrence Howard was cast in the lead role in 2006, but the historical drama failed to get off the ground as Lee continued developing and directing other projects. —ZS

Quentin Tarantino’s “Killer Crow”

Tarantino is famous for talking about projects and then years later abandoning them. Look no further than “Killer Crow,” a feature film script he wrote that was carved out of his massive original screenplay for “Inglourious Basterds.” In the original “Basterds” screenplay, Brad Pitt’s character Lt. Aldo Raine comes across a platoon of black soldiers who are also on a mission of revenge. Tarantino’s “Killer Crows” screenplay centered on this platoon as they attempt to exact revenge on the white officers who screwed them over in the military. Tarantino has admitted the “Killer Crow” script would need another polish if it were to ever be made into a feature. But onsidering Tarantino still plans to retire after 10 movies, and his next feature — the tenth — is about a film critic, it appears unlikely “Killer Crow” will ever get made. —ZS

Quentin Tarantino’s “Double V Vega”

Following the breakout success of “Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino eyed a prequel to the movie that would bring together the sibling characters of Vincent Vega in “Pulp Fiction” (John Travolta) and Vic Vega in “Reservoir Dogs” (Michael Madsen). “The only thing I did know was the premise,” Tarantino told Cinema Blend. “I had a premise. It would’ve taken place in Amsterdam, during the time Vincent was in Amsterdam. He was running some club for Marsellus Wallace in Amsterdam, he was there for a couple years. In some point during his two years spent running that club, Vic shows up to visit him and it would’ve been their weekend. Exactly what happened to them or what trouble they got into I never took it that far.” —ZS

Baz Luhrmann’s Alexander the Great Epic

Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” is one of the most notorious flops of the 2000s, but moviegoers were originally set to get another Alexander the Great film epic. Baz Luhrmann announced in 2002 he was developing an Alexander the Great movie along with his “Romeo + Juliet” leading man Leonardo DiCaprio. Stone’s movie was already in development at the time with Colin Farrell, so Luhrmann struggled to get the financing budget he needed to see his vision through. Some reports estimated Luhrmann was looking for a $150 million production budget. The project collapsed under its own ambitions, with Luhrmann and DiCaprio reuniting years later for the director’s “Great Gatsby” adaptation. —ZS

Kathryn Bigelow’s Joan of Arc Epic “Company of Angels”

Around the time she was making her 1996 science-fiction thriller “Strange Days,” Kathryn Bigelow became attached as the director of 20th Century Fox’s historical epic “Company of Angels.” The project was one of three Joan of Arc films being developed at the time and had a script written by Jay Cocks, best known today for his Martin Scorsese collaborations “The Age of Innocence,” “Gangs of New York,” and “Silence.” The project fell apart when Luc Besson came on board as executive producer and demanded Bigelow cast Milla Jovovich in the Joan of Arc role. When Bigelow left “Company of Angels,” Besson stepped in to direct the film himself. Besson and Jovovich’s “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc” opened theatrically in 1999. Bigelow filed a lawsuit against Besson for breach of contract, claiming he had taken elements of her script for his own film. —ZS

Cary Fukunaga’s “It”

Andy Muschietti’s two-part “It” franchise grossed over one billion dollars at the worldwide box office (the first installment is still the highest grossing horror release ever with $700 million worldwide), but it was originally Cary Fukunaga who was hired to bring Stephen King’s horror novel to the big screen. The director left the project in 2015 over “creative differences” with New Line, but in a 2018 GQ interview disclosed that New Line was worried he would not be an open collaborator on the movie. “I think it was fear on their part that they couldn’t control me,” Fukunaga said. The filmmaker left the “It” production two weeks before filming was set to begin. Fukunaga was so involved with the movie that he remained credited as a screenwriter when Muschietti’s version opened in 2017. —ZS

David Fincher’s Eliot Ness Graphic Novel Adaptation

Fincher has had countless unmade projects, including an Arthur C. Clarke adaptation of “Rendezvous With Rama” starring Morgan Freeman, but one project that got close to a reality is “Ness.” The film was an adaptation of the graphic novel “Torso” and had Matt Damon attached to star as Prohibition agent Eliot Ness in a story about the hunt for a Cleveland serial killer. Casey Affleck and Rachel McAdams were also circling roles for the movie, which came together as Fincher’s follow-up to “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” The movie died because development took longer than expected and eventually Paramount lost out on the rights to the graphic novel it previously owned. Fincher moved on to “The Social Network.” —ZS

David Fincher’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”

One of David Fincher’s most infamous lost projects is “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”: an adaptation of the 1870 Jules Verne adventure classic. Fincher was developing the movie with Disney and had locations scouted and a massive budget in place before the project was killed because the director and the studio could not agree on casting. Fincher reportedly wanted Brad Pitt or Channing Tatum for the lead, but Disney apparently was determined to have Chris Hemsworth star. As Fincher told Little White Lies, “You get over $200 million — all motion picture companies have corporate culture and corporate anxieties. Once we got past the list of people we could cast as the different characters in the film, once we got past one or two names which made them very comfortable, making a movie at that price, it became this bizarre endeavor to find which three names you could rub together to make platinum.” —ZS

George Miller’s “Justice League: Mortal”

Long before Zack Snyder’s “Justice League” bombed with critics and at the box office, “Mad Max” visionary George Miller was developing his own DC Comics tentpole, titled “Justice League: Mortal.” Miller famously cast Armie Hammer as Batman (a choice that maybe hasn’t aged so well) and Adam Brody as The Flash, but the 2008 Writers Guild of America strike killed the chances of the movie going into production. Hammer told Leonard Maltin that the movie would’ve taken the darkest approach to Batman/Bruce Wayne to that point. “I wanted this Batman character to be so dark. I was like look, no one – and this was George’s idea as well, this was really in the script – but no one ever really shows how truly psychotic this man has to be,” Hammer said. “Like this is a guy who chooses to put on a costume, in all black, and sneak around at night and beat the shit out of people.” —ZS

Ridley Scott’s “Blood Meridian”

Ridley Scott’s 2013 Cormac McCarthy thriller “The Counselor” was not supposed to be the director’s first go-around with the esteemed novelist. Following the 2004 release of “Kingdom of Heaven,” Scott and screenwriter William Monahan came on board Paramount Pictures’ adaptation of McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.” Many readers have long wondered if a film version of “Blood Meridian” would even be possible given the book’s severe violence, and that’s ultimately what killed Scott’s adaptation. The director confirmed in 2008 that the movie had been killed because the violence was just mpossible to get across at the studio level. —ZS

Edgar Wright’s “Ant-Man”

Peyton Reed’s “Ant-Man” movies are some of the weaker entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which makes many fans wonder what Edgar Wright might have done with the character. Wright’s snappy visuals and lively tone would have been a welcome addition for the MCU had the studio and the filmmaker not parted ways over creative differences. What was heartbreaking about Wright’s “Ant-Man” split was that he and co-writer Joe Cornish had been developing the superhero movie for a decade when their version of the project was abandoned and polished over by writers Reed, Paul Rudd, and Adam McKay. Both Wright and Cornish still earned screenwriting credits on the theatrical “Ant-Man” release, but it’s clear watching it that Wright’s vision got chopped to pieces. —ZS

Sofia Coppola’s “The Little Mermaid”

Sofia Coppola boarded Universal Pictures and Working Title’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” in 2014, but the more expensive the movie’s budget became the more Coppola realized she would have to compromise her original vision for the movie. Coppola wasn’t interested in making the family-friendly Disney version realized with Halle Bailey in 2023, but instead wanted to keep the dark elements of the Hans Christian Andersen original. The director told IndieWire the studio wasn’t going to spend big money on such a risky pitch, which included filming much of the feature underwater. The filmmaker eventually left after a year of development. The project floated around Hollywood without Coppola, with Chloe Grace Moretz cast as Ariel in 2015, but it never got off the ground. —ZS

Spike Jonze’s “Harold and the Purple Crayon”

Before production started on “Where the Wild Things Are,” Spike Jonze intended to bring another iconic children’s book to the big screen: Crockett Johnson’s “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” Jonze had been meeting with “Wild Things” author Maurice Sendak, who considered Johnson a mentor, and he spent a year developing the movie and the ways in which he could blend live-action photography and animation in a believable way. Producer John B. Carls teased Jonze’s plans for the movie in an interview with The New York Times. The project was dropped two months before production was set to start because new executives at TriStar felt Jonze’s vision for the movie would be too risky to turn a profit. All that remains is a short test film. —ZS

Terrence Malick’s Che Guevara Biopic

Steven Soderbergh’s 2008 biographical drama “Che” first got its start as a Terrence Malick-directed drama. The “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven” filmmaker was obsessed with Che Guevara during his time as a reporter for LIFE magazine and was approached by Soderbergh (fresh off “Traffic” at the time) to direct a Che biopic. Soderbergh already had his “Traffic” Oscar winner Benicio del Toro lined up to play the title character. Malick began working on the script, which focused exclusively on Che’s Bolivian campaign from 1966–67, but Soderbergh revealed Malick’s draft was “unreadable.” Producer Bill Pohlad told The Wrap in 2011 that Malick’s screenplay was daunting” and not an “easy” read. Soderbergh ended up taking over the project and starting from scratch. Malick’s Che feature died and the director went on to work on “The New World.” —ZS

Steven Soderbergh’s Leni Riefenstahl Movie

Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns have collaborated on films such as “The Informant” and “Contagion,” plus the upcoming Netflix original “The Laundromat,” and for a time the two were planning to make a potentially controversial film about German film director Leni Riefenstahl. The plan was to depict the “Triumph of the Will” director as an aggrieved artist being run into the ground by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. Soderbergh and Burns realized they were walking a thin line and abandoned the script. The two ended up pivoting to their epidemic thriller “Contagion.” —ZS

Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘Ponyo’ Sequel

Hayao Miyazaki does not make direct sequels to his original movies, but he got closer than ever with “Ponyo.” The writer-director heavily considered making a follow-up movie to his 2008 fantasy film, which won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki steered Miyazaki away from his plans for a second “Ponyo” movie because he wanted the filmmaker to adapt “The Wind Rises” manga Miyazaki had written earlier. Rumor has it Miyazaki was unsure whether or not “The Wind Rises” could work as a profitable animated movie (the story is a biographical drama about Japanese fighter pilot designer Jiro Horikoshi). Suzuki’s convincing worked and Miyazaki dropped his plans for a “Ponyo” sequel. —ZS

Lynne Ramsay’s “The Lovely Bones”

The eight years Lynne Ramsay spent between 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and 2017’s “You Were Never Really Here” was made up of a couple of projects that went unmade (see “Jane Got a Gun” above). Film4 hired Ramsay to direct its adaptation of “The Lovely Bones,” but the filmmaker was not intending on being faithful to Alice Sebold’s award-winning novel. Ramsay told The New York Times she was not a fan of the book’s “My Little Pony, she’s in heaven, everything’s OK aspects.” When DreamWorks became interested in co-producing the movie, Film4 dropped Ramsay so that the movie version would follow the book more closely. Ramsay called developing “The Lovely Bones” movie a “debacle” and a “a weird, Kafkaesque nightmare.” Peter Jackson ended up directing the movie. —ZS

Luca Guadagnino’s “Blood on the Tracks”

Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” is one of the most thematically coherent, lyrically stunning albums in the history of American music. Reeling from the breakdown of his marriage to Sara Lownds, Dylan crafted a series of loosely connected fictional songs that all center around themes of romantic loss and relationship atrophy. The material seemed like a natural fit for “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino, who announced his intention to adapt the album into a movie in 2018. The film would have been set in the 1970s, with a largely original story based on themes and motifs from Dylan’s sprawling album.

But in an interview, Guadagnino revealed that the project is dead due to budget issues. “I wanted to make that movie happen,” he said. “But I knew it would have to cost a certain amount of money because it was a period movie, taking place between 1970 and 1980, and it required, like, 20 different characters. We didn’t want to make it for less.” —CZ

Quentin Tarantino’s “Star Trek”

Quentin Tarantino has always preferred to work on original projects, but a chance to play in the “Star Trek” sandbox was almost too much for the longtime Trekkie to resist. In 2019, it was announced that Tarantino was working on his own “Star Trek” film inspired by “A Piece of the Action”: an episode of the original series that takes place on a planet that based its culture on 1920s Chicago gangsters. 

Tarantino toyed with directing the project, which likely would have been rated R, but ultimately decided not to make it as his last film. Still, the idea of Tarantino making a “Star Trek” film that combined aspects of science fiction and gangster movies will have cinephiles asking “what if?” for years to come. —CZ

Steven Spielberg’s “Harvey”

In 2009, Steven Spielberg announced that he would direct a remake of “Harvey,” the classic 1950 film starring Jimmy Stewart as a man who befriended a six-foot-tall imaginary rabbit. Tom Hanks, Will Smith, and Robert Downey Jr. were linked to Stewart’s role at various points, but Spielberg was never able to secure the right star to lead the film. The wholesome material and Old Hollywood pedigree would have fit firmly in Spielberg’s wheelhouse, but the project ultimately died as a result of difficulties casting the lead role. —CZ

Guillermo Del Toro’s “The Count of Monte Cristo”

Guillermo Del Toro spent 15 years trying to adapt Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckling novel “The Count of Monte Cristo,” but like many of his unrealized projects, his vision was just too big for studios to stomach. His film adaptation, which he described as a “steampunk gothic western” set in Mexico, would have been titled “The Left Hand of Darkness.” The novel does not contain any monsters or creatures of any kind, but “Nightmare Alley” proved Del Toro is more than capable of making a great movie without them.

In late 2021, Del Toro expressed interest in rewriting the script and pitching it as a smaller, weirder film, so “The Count of Monte Cristo” may live another day. But for now, it remains on top of the massive heap of Del Toro passion projects that never found funding. —CZ

Martin Scorsese’s Ramones Movie

Martin Scorsese has a serious claim to the title of “greatest rock and roll filmmaker of all time.” In addition to the plethora of music documentaries he directed, Scorsese has a knack for working classic rock songs like the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” into his soundtracks at the perfect moments. So when it was announced in 2014 that Scorsese would be making a film about punk legends The Ramones, it seemed like a perfect fit. However, the film never made it much further than the initial announcement. It was quickly revealed that there was no script, and Scorsese ultimately turned his attention to his long-gestating passion project “Silence.” —CZ

Edgar Wright’s “Shadows”

In 2015, Dreamworks Animation announced that Edgar Wright had signed on to direct his first animated film, “Shadows.” The original project, which Wright was set to co-write with comedian David Walliams, was based on “the concept of shadows.” While the idea of the visually creative filmmaker directing an animated film was exciting to many of Wright’s fans, the project never materialized due to executive turnover at DreamWorks. 

“Well I wrote three drafts of [‘Shadows’],” Wright said in 2017. “But because of the whole regime change there, most of the people that hired me and David Walliams to do it don’t work there anymore. So at the moment, that’s not something that I’m necessarily attached to I think.” —CZ

Akiva Goldsman’s “Batman vs. Superman”

Zack Snyder wasn’t the first filmmaker to come up with the idea of Batman fighting Superman. In the early 2000s, “Batman Forever” and “Batman & Robin” screenwriter Akiva Goldsman wrote a script that would see the two iconic DC heroes battle it out. Colin Farrell was set to play Batman with Jude Law suiting up as Superman, and Wolfgang Petersen was on board to direct. The project never materialized, and fans didn’t get to see the two heroes fight until “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” hit theaters in 2016. But in a 2020 interview with IndieWire, Goldsman recalled his bold vision for the unmade film.

“It was so dark,” Goldsman said. “It starts with Alfred’s funeral. Bruce Wayne falls in love and they go on a honeymoon. The Joker kills her. And the darkest part was, later you discovered it wasn’t real at all. The whole marriage was a set up on the part of the Joker. We used to do stuff like that all the time and then just get it knocked back.” —CZ

Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Old Fink”

The Coen Brothers have never made a sequel to one of their films, but have been open about their desire to continue the story of “Barton Fink.” The genre-bending black comedy stars John Turturro as a radical playwright struggling to work within the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s, but the filmmaking duo have plans for a sequel that would pick up nearly 30 years later. Because the eponymous protagonist would be older, they appropriately want to title the film “Old Fink.” 

“That’s another 1967 movie,” Joel Coen said. “It’s the summer of love and [Fink is] teaching at Berkeley. He ratted on a lot of his friends to the House Un-American Activities committee.”

While the idea of Fink becoming a rat would mesh well with the hypocrisy of the character that they established in “Barton Fink,” the brothers seemed to be equally excited about the fashion choices that the 1960s setting would open up for them.

“He’s got the George Kaufman hair but he’s going gray,” Ethan Coen said. “He wears a medallion.” 

The Coen Brothers always planned to wait decades for Turturro to be old enough to play the role, so “Old Fink” may not be dead yet. But given the turbulent status of Joel and Ethan’s filmmaking partnership these days, fans probably shouldn’t hold their breath for this one. —CZ

Steven Spielberg’s “Robopocalypse”

In 2011, Steven Spielberg signed on to direct a film based on “Robopocalypse,” Daniel H. Wilson’s novel about dangerous advances in artificial intelligence that lead to a war between humans and robots. Spielberg expressed hope that the film could be a return to his days of making popcorn sci-fi blockbusters, and he hired Drew Godard to write the script and cast Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway. 

The $200 million film was gearing up to shoot in Canada when Spielberg indefinitely delayed the project altogether. At the time, his spokesperson said that the film was “too important and the script is not ready, and it’s too expensive to produce. It’s back to the drawing board to see what is possible.” Spielberg eventually stepped away from directing the project, with Michael Bay announced as his replacement in 2018, though little progress has been made since then. —CZ

Quentin Tarantino’s “Luke Cage”

The idea of Quentin Tarantino seriously considering directing a film about a Marvel character sounds ridiculous today. But in the early 1990s, long before comic book movies were cool, Tarantino had his sights on making a Luke Cage movie as his “Reservoir Dogs” followup. 

“There was a time before all this Marvel shit was coming out,” Tarantino said. “It was after ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ it was before ‘Pulp Fiction,’ and I had thought about doing ‘Luke Cage.’”

Tarantino claims he ultimately decided against making the movie because he and his comic-loving friends could never agree on the right person to cast in the leading role.

“Because I had an idea that Larry Fishburne would’ve been the perfect guy to play Luke Cage,” he said. “And I’m talking King of New York era Larry Fishburne. ‘My name is Jimmy Jump.’ … But all my friends were like, ‘No, no, listen, it’s got to be Wesley Snipes.’ And I go, ‘Look, I like Wesley Snipes, but Larry Fishburne is practically Marlon Brando. I think Fish is the man.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but he’d have to get in shape in a big way. Snipes is that way already!’ And I go, ‘Fuck that! That’s not that important! Fuck you, you ruined the whole damn thing!’” —CZ