The 10 Greatest Movies Never Made

In the fast-paced world of show business, projects are announced before swiftly being cancelled every day. Yet there are some film projects that obsess their creators for years, always on the verge of getting made, before the cinematic powers that be decide otherwise. This article is a celebration of the best movies never made – films that would have been surefire masterpieces, that generations of film fans have had to resort to merely imagining existing.

10. Sergio Leone’s “The Phantom”

Having built a reputation as the greatest Western director of all time, a statement that is not open to argument, Sergio Leone spent the majority of the seventies and early eighties in a period of inactivity. During this time, he turned down the opportunity to direct The Godfather – but even more tantalisingly, turned down the opportunity to direct Flash Gordon.

Looking at the list of his abandoned film projects shows that, as synonymous as his name is with sweeping cinematic vistas of the wild west, Leone may have secretly been a massive comic book nerd. One of his passion projects was an adaptation of Lee Falk’s DC comic strip The Phantom, which is actually a perfect fit for Leone – the character fights against injustice despite having no real superpowers, just like the Western heroes he reveres.

He was so indebted to the idea that he even intended to adapt Falk’s Mandrake the Magician comic book into a movie as a follow-up. Sadly, the movie never came to be – Leone departed the project midway through writing the screenplay to direct Once Upon a Time in America. When the Phantom movie adaptation arrived in 1996, with Billy Zane in the title role, it left no mark on pop-culture and became a quickly forgotten flop.

9. Paul Verhoeven’s “The Crusade”, with Arnold Schwarzenegger

There was a bizarre period of time in the mid-nineties when Paul Verhoeven was one of the biggest directors in Hollywood – at the time of production, his Total Recall was the most expensive movie ever made. After the success of Basic Instinct, Verhoeven wanted to get his big-budget passion project made – a tale of the crusades, starring his Total Recall collaborator (and then biggest star on the face of the planet) Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Imagined as a demented cross between Spartacus and Conan the Barbarian, the film would depict the crusades in all their gruesome reality; not one to shy away from controversy, Verhoeven insisted the movie would show all the anti-Semitism and anti-Arabian sentiments of the real crusaders. It could be argued this insistence on showing Christian characters as religiously insensitive caused the film to get the ax, but that’s not true (after all, controversy is what drove his movies to become mega hits).

In fact, the project died after a particular aggressive meeting with some studio executives where he refused to promise the budget wouldn’t go over $100 million. The movie has never seen the light of day again – after religious responses to Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, it seems unlikely that it will be re-entering production anytime soon.

8. Hitchc*ck’s “Kaleidoscope”

After the disappointing commercial and critical performances of Marnie and Torn Curtain, Alfred Hitchc*ck decided to go back to basics for his follow up project. Initially titled Frenzy (before he decided to use that name for another project), Kaleidoscope was a good, old fashioned necrophilliac murder rampage romp in New York City. Despite extensive test footage being shot, the movie never got made, as studio executives felt that the style Hitch was going for was far too uncommercial.

As Hitchc*ck was reportedly heavily influenced by the French new wave, as well as Italian neorealist directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, it is easy to imagine a late career masterpiece, even if Francois Truffaut complained that the screenplay had “too much sex and violence for my taste”, showing that the movie would still be trademark Hitchc*ck, despite these new found influences.

7. Edgar Wright’s “Ant-Man”

One of the most infamous abandoned projects of recent years is Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man, which had been in the works at Marvel for close to a decade, before having it’s production disrupted after Wright unceremoniously quit as director. Although the movie is going ahead with the same cast intact, including a “Story by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish” credit, it has been reported that Wright quit as his story and movie kept getting tampered with in order to fit into the narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

As Ant-Man will feature in Captain America: Civil War, it’s clear to see that as the first chapter in Marvel’s Phase Three, the studio needed to introduce the new character in a way that would immediately involve him in the studio narrative, instead of the stand alone story Wright and Cornish created. This means the movie is far more likely to be the generic Marvel movie we have to come to expect, rather than a zany, visually kinetic Edgar Wright picture – we’ll have to wait and see when the movie opens on July 17. Wright shouldn’t worry though – he has already directed the best comic book movie of the decade with Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

6. David Cronenberg’s “Frankenstein”

All the movies on this list were directorial passion projects, with the exception of one – David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. In fact, this movie was never even proposed by the director, who only provisionally agreed over the space of one phone call, before finding an advert for his picture splashed across Entertainment Weekly. It’s only included on this list as it may have been the definitive perfect choice of director and source material – during the mid eighties, Cronenberg was still in his body horror phase and what is Frankenstein if not the ultimate body horror scenario?

Frankenstein did get adapted again in Hollywood a few years later by Kenneth Branagh, which was initially met with universally negative reviews before a recent critical reappraisal. With Branagh transforming into a journeyman director, putting anonymous touches of franchise tentpoles like Thor and Cinderella, it is still tempting to imagine what Cronenberg could have made of this gothic masterpiece.

5. David Lynch’s “Ronnie Rocket”

Ronnie Rocket sounds like trademark David Lynch; the story of a detective who tries to access a different dimension by standing on one leg, whilst being chased by a group of people known as the “donut men”, as well as the inclusion of a dwarf character who can only survive when plugged into an electric circuit. Lynch has shown that bonkers concepts can make thrilling movies, so Ronnie Rocket would have been no exception – the film has never officially been cancelled, with Lynch even admitting the project is merely “hibernating”.

It was initially intended to be his follow-up film to Eraserhead, before being proposed as the follow-up to every one of his movies up to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. As recently as 2013, Lynch discussed the project – however, with the original screenplay accessible online, it seems unlikely the movie will be entering production (at least, in its original state) anytime soon. Lynch hasn’t made a movie since 2006’s Inland Empire – but maybe directing a third series of Twin Peaks will reignite his passion behind the camera?

4. Tarantino’s “Casino Royale”

Quentin Tarantino’s back catalogue is full of tantalising unrealised projects: a third Kill Bill installment, a Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction mash-up starring the Vega Brothers and an adaptation of The Killer Inside Me starring Leonardo DiCaprio have all been talked about as potential projects for the filmmaker. Yet nothing is more tantalising than the idea of a Tarantino Bond movie.

Ater Die Another Day, the director bought the rights to Ian Fleming’s debut 007 novel Casino Royale, in the hopes of turning it into a black-and-white period piece. However, the director’s hopes to make the film, which would have kept Pierce Brosnan in the title role, went unfounded after director Martin Campbell was hired to adapt the film into Daniel Craig’s inaugural outing as the suave super spy. To this day, Tarantino repeatedly claims he should be credited for Casino Royale being the big Bond comeback, even if he did criticise Skyfall as feeling “more like an action movie than a James Bond movie”.

3. Tim Burton’s “Superman Lives”, with Nicolas Cage as Superman

More to do with curiosity than the likelihood of a lost masterpiece, Tim Burton’s Superman Lives has recently been the subject of much pop-culture discussion in the wake of Man of Steel. Why? Four words: Nicolas Cage as Superman. The internet’s favourite over-actor has long been known to be a vocal fan of comic books – after all, you don’t casually name your son Kal-El.

Superman is the role he was born to play and with Burton hoisted from the Batman franchise in order to let Joel Schumacher destroy it, it seemed only fair for him to reboot another franchise whose reputation had been dragged through the mud due to diminishing returns as sequels. Not only that, the script was penned by another comics nerd, Kevin Smith.

With the actor, writer and director all in the middle of a mid-nineties winning streak, Superman Lives should have been a success. Sadly, Burton left to direct Sleepy Hollow with the intention of returning – something made impossible after Batman and Robin put the final nail in the coffin for comic book adaptations for a good few years.

2. Orson Welles’ “Heart of Darkness”

With Citizen Kane, Orson Welles achieved the feat of not only making the greatest debut film of all time, but the best film of all time full stop (give or take a Vertigo). Yet he initially intended for his debut movie to be an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a novel that has since been adapted into countless works of pop-culture, most notably Apocalypse Now.

In 1939 however, Welles’ screenplay was considered too dense by studio executives, whilst many contemporary critics suggested the political overtones in Welles mammoth 174 page screenplay caused the project to get rejected. Welles’ screenplay has long been available online, with many praising the technical ambition on show – the project was arguably even more ambitious than Citizen Kane and maybe could have rivalled it in best movies of all time lists. So far, the screenplay has only been performed on stage – any cinematic translation will naturally be overshadowed by the thought of what Welles would have done with it.

1. Stanley Kubrick’s “Napoleon”

Stanley Kubrick was obsessed with Napoleon – Malcolm McDowell famously recounted the director had a drawer that contained documents detailing where Napoleon was on every single day of his life. Even though his story has been adapted for the screen before, most notably in a 240 minute silent epic, film historians are right to believe we have been robbed of the definitive cinematic vision.

Kubrick tried to get the film off the ground for years, with Jack Nicholson in the title role, before the commercial failure of Barry Lyndon advised his investors not to fund any future period pieces for the director. His epic screenplay lives on and is currently being developed into a miniseries: Baz Luhrmann, a director not especially known for his Kubrickian attention to detail, has been attached to direct. This very different vision of Napoleon may be great, but it feels like not only have we lost a Kubrick masterpiece, we’ve lost his definitive masterpiece.

Which of these movies do you think would have been the best? And are there any great unmade movies that I haven’t included in the list?

(top image: Stanley Kubrick at age 21 for LOOK magazine)