36 Major Blockbusters and Why They Never Got Made

This article contains a spoiler for Gladiator. 

If you're one of those frustrated over the quality of many of the blockbusters that make it to the inside of a multiplex, then ponder the following. For each of these were supposed to be major projects, that for one reason or another, stalled on their way to the big screen. Some still may make it. But for many others, the journey is over. Here are the big blockbusters that never were...

1. Airframe

The late Michael Crichton scored another residential on the bestseller list with his impressive thriller, Airframe. It was published in 1996, just after films of Crichton works such asJurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, and the immortal Congohad proven to be hits of various sizes.

So: a hit book, another techno thriller, there must be a movie in it, right? Hollywood agreed, with names such as Sigourney Weaver and Gwyneth Paltrow linked with the project. Demi Moore's name was circling as well.

Even before the book was published, Touchstone Pictures picked up the rights for it, according to Varietypaying $8-10m for the privilege. However, it never got made, and Michael Crichton eventually - according to this L.A. Times report - returned the money. The problem? Crichton couldn't agree to a script that he liked. Instead, it'd be Timelinethat made it to the screen next. And that didn't exactly go to plan.

2. Alexander The Great

You wait ages for an Alexander the Great biopic to come along, and suddenly, two of them make it to the starting gate. As it happened, only Oliver Stone's, er, "not very well received" take made it to the screen. The one that fell apart? It was a big budget passion project for Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann.

Leonardo DiCaprio - who would eventually star for Luhrmann in The Great Gatsby - was cast in the lead role. Unfortunately though, the film needed to raise $150m, and this was back in 2003, to get going. It reportedly struggled to attract the necessary international investment, and the project slowly ran out of fuel.

Luhrmann did keep battling, though. He delayed the movie until a 2006 release date to give himself time to sort other projects out. But then Stone's Alexanderfilm failed to hit in 2004, and by November of that year, Luhrmann's Alexander The Great was officially dead. The writer/director was reportedly "devastated" when it fell apart.

3. Batman: Year One

History is positively littered with the empty capes and cowls of unmade Batman movies. Now, there’s a certain sameness to Bat-flicks, regardless of the overall tone or the level of realism involved. But Batman: Year Onewould have been unique.

You see, the Batman franchise was floundering in 2001. Fresh off the drubbing of Batman & Robin and the failure to launch of Batman 5 (Batman Triumphant), Warner Bros. was probably trying to find the right word for "reboot," and a fresh start was needed.

Enter Frank Miller, writer of acclaimed comics like The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One (and who had tried his hand at Hollywood with a draft of RoboCop 2). Miller brought some questionable flourishes (you don’t want to know) to the Bat-mythology, which is amusing considering he was touted for having written the most acclaimed Batman origin story of all time, the story that this film shares its very title with.

The presence of Darren Aronofsky makes this one seem a little more palatable, but Warner Bros. got distracted, wandered off into a proposed Batman Beyond live-action film, and a stalled Bruce Wayne TV series (which morphed into Smallville and which we’ll try not to blame for Gotham), before returning to the origin story concept for Batman Begins...which is assuredly better than anything else that was on the menu.

4. Battlestar Galactica

Bryan Singer has had two major bursts of big success in his directing career thus far. His run from The Usual Suspects (1995) through to X-Men 2 (2003) was a strong one, and it was only when he turned down X-Men: The Last Standto accept the slightly poisoned chalice of Superman Returns that things went a little awry. Following his Superman movie, Singer's next two films experienced release delays, and arguably underperformed at the box office: that'd be 2008's Valkyrie, and 2013's Jack The Giant Slayer.

In between making those two though, and before his triumphant return to X-Men movies with X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Singer was set to develop a big screen take on Battlestar Galactica. This would go back to the original TV show rather than be centred around the Ronald D. Moore modern day reboot. Singer had, back in 2001, been developing a new TV show, that was canned in the light of the September 11th attacks. But he came back to BSGaround 2009.

Universal was behind the film, and after his planned movie reboot of Excaliburdied a death, Singer was developing the BSGfilm as late as 2011. It would have been scheduled as his next film afterJack The Giant Slayer.

However, when Matthew Vaughn elected not to return for theX-Men: First Class sequel, Singer took over forDays Of Future Past, and he's now deep in the midst of making X-Men: Apocalypse. Back in 2013, he said that the BSG project was now "on hold", and we suspect it's likely to remain there for a long, long time.

5. Bioshock

The world of Rapture, brought to life in the Bioshockvideogames, had a cinematic feel to it from the minute it first appeared on screen. Clearly a labor of design love, it was little surprise that the Bioshockgames - not least when they hit big - garnered the attention of the movies.

But Bioshockwould not be a low cost production. Realising the game's world on screen would take significant time and money, and set construction work got underway. The problem, however, wasn't just the money. Gore Verbinski and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo were attached to the film, and they faced the battle of keeping faithful to the game, whilst managing a tight budget. There was, after all, no way that Bioshockwas going to be anything less than an R-rated film. A hard-R at that, not least for the injection scenes alone.

Verbinski was insistent that it couldn't be watered down, and, of course, an R rating is generally regarded as a limiter for box office success. With a nine-figure budget needed to make Bioshock, the studio in this case cut its losses. Universal thus paid up the bill for the work done thus far, and walked away from the film. Verbinski has told us that he's not played a Bioshockgame since, as it still feels just a little too raw for him.

6. Crisis In The Hot Zone

A simple case of competing projects again, this one. Based on the New Yorker article by Richard Preston, which was then expanded into his book The Hot Zone, Crisis In The Hot Zone had plenty in its corner. Ridley Scott was set to direct, Jodie Foster was cast to lead, and Robert Redford was also on board. But there were two problems. Firstly, Fox was struggling with the budget, and wanted to beef up a strong male lead role. Hence, Robert Redford's inclusion. Foster was reportedly unimpressed, and as delays ensued, Warner Bros. was pushing ahead at full steam with Outbreak.

And Warner Bros, won the race. Outbreakstarted production, and thus Fox pulled the plug on Crisis In The Hot Zone. At that stage, Outbreaktoo shut down for a few weeks for script reworking, safe in the knowledge that it had won the race. The movie would be a hit for Warner Bros. in 1995, whilst subsequent attempts to remount Crisis In The Hot Zone have failed.

7. Crusade

The fate of this would-be epic - and the fate of an entire Hollywood studio - ultimately boiled down to one solitary meeting. By 1994, Carolco was in a financially wobbly position to say the least, and it had to choose whether to bet its dwindling coffers on an expensive period movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by Paul Verhoeven. Sets were already being built in Spain, but in a pivotal meeting between Verhoeven and Carolco, the director furiously refused to promise that Crusadewouldn't go over budget. Carolco therefore decided to cut its losses and cancel Crusade, and thus, what could have been one of the best films of Schwarzenegger's career was put to the sword.

Instead, Carolco decided to place its bets against another (almost) $100m epic - Rennie Harlin's Cutthroat Island. The film sank at the box-office, and so did Carolco - regrettably, it was forced to file for bankruptcy shortly after.

8. Doc Savage

Doc Savage is like a cross between Superman, Indiana Jones, and James Bond, with a team of helpers who would give Ocean’s 11 a run for their money in the "highly specialized skills" department. For real, get this guy a movie franchise already.

Anyway, the closest we’ve come to a prestigious Doc Savage film (the 1974 movie starring Ron Ely, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze is strictly for pulp superhero completists) came in the early part of the 21st century, when Frank Darabont’s Darkwoods Productions went to work on a Doc Savage movie for Warner Bros and Universal. A script was commissioned based on an 80 page treatment by Brett Hill and David Leslie Johnson. Darabont would have served as co-director with Chuck Russell, who had recently directed Eraserstarring Arnold Schwarzenegger. And speaking of Arnie...

Arnold Schwarzenegger was all set to play Doc Savage. Of course he was. Arnie’s physique looks like a James Bama Doc Savage painting brought to life. Arnie crowed about Darabont’s “fantastic” script, but it sounds like funding is what ultimately shut it down. "I think that's right. They're shy about making this kind of movie because it costs that much money," Arnold said in 2002. The "that much money" he's referring to was reportedly $220 million, scary by today's standards, terrifying fifteen years ago.

"So maybe some day they will do this movie," Arnie said. Maybe they will, but it won’t be this movie. Doc Savage is now at Sony with Shane Black writing, possibly directing, and with an eye on Chris Hemsworth to star as Doc.

9. Jodorowsky’s Dune

Alejandro Jodorowsky set out to make a version of Dunethat would give viewers the experience of being under the influence of psychedelics, without actually having to consume any questionable substances. Pre-production was well underway, with famed comic artist Moebius crafting a 1200 page book of beautifully illustrated storyboards. With a cast that would have included Mick Jagger, Orson Wells, and Salvador Dali, designs by HR Giger, and visual effects by Dan O’Bannon, there’s no doubt that it would have put proverbial asses in proverbial seats.

As you might imagine when we’re talking about psychedelics and 1200 pages of storyboards by a visionary comic book artist, ambition and lack of adequate financing (the spice must flow, after all) ultimately killed Dune. The film rights were snapped up by Dino De Laurentiis in 1982, which he then used to produce the inescapable David Lynch version... which Jodorowsky gleefully describes as “terrible.”  

Still, this is one of those cases where perhaps the dream of what we could have had is better than what we actually got. If nothing else, Frank Pavich’s documentary on the project, Jodorowsky’s Dune, is a masterpiece on its own, and it is essential viewing for any fan of science fiction, movies in general, science fiction movies in particular, psychotropic drugs, or watching science fiction movies while under the influence of psychotropic drugs.

10. David Cronenberg's The Fly and Eastern Promises sequels

In an era when studios are tripping all over themselves to remake or revive films from the '80s, it seems strange that David Cronenberg would struggle to find backing for a sequel to The Fly. Yet this is exactly what happened in 2012, when Cronenberg admitted that he'd wanted to make sequels to both his 1986 horror classic and his superb 2007 gangster drama, Eastern Promises. Unfortunately, tight purse strings meant that neither project got off the ground.

"What was in it that attracted them could not be done low-budget,"Cronenberg lamented. "So I think that was the problem."

11. Genesis

French new wave director Robert Bresson remains one of France's most revered filmmakers, and he certainly left the world having contributed some very significant films to it. However, one he couldn't get made was Genesis, a film that was to be a large scale adaptation of the Bible's first book.

Legendary producer Dino de Laurentiis was backing the project, agreeing to stump up the not-insignificant bill for it.

But Bresson couldn't get the film to work. Twice he committed to it in 1963 and 1985 - and twice he walked away, reportedly complaining that he couldn't get the animal performers to do as he needed them to do.

Bresson never cracked his Genesismovie, even though in this case it wasn't the funding that proved to be the problem. Rather, the director himself couldn't find a way to realise the story on screen that he was happy with.

12. Ghost Soldiers

Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise have, thus far, made two films together. The first, Minority Report, is an excellent adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story, that was a box office hit in 2002. Then, a few years' later, they scored a bigger hit with a less impressive film, War Of The Worlds.

Yet after they'd finished shooting Minority Report, they actually had another project that they were set to collaborate on. It was called Ghost Soldiers, based on the non-fiction book by Hampton Sides. The Ghost Soldiers of the title were survivors of an event in World War II known as the Bataan Death March. Its survivors had spent three years in a Japanese prison camp, and Josh Friedman had penned a working screenplay.

The plan was for Spielberg to direct and Cruise to star, but this one just seemed to fizzle out. Spielberg would instead commit to Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, War Of The Worlds, and Munich, and Ghost Soldiers quietly slipped off the radar, seemingly never to return.

13. Gladiator 2

This, surely, would have been one of the most bonkers mainstream sequels ever made. Unfazed by the problem presented by the original Gladiator, where Russell Crowe's Maximus died heroically, musician-turned writer Nick Cave would have reincarnated Maximus as a kind of Highlander-like immortal.

Gladiator 2 would have reportedly seen Maximus return from the afterlife and witness major conflicts through history (including World War II and Vietnam) before settling down for a desk job at the Pentagon. Sadly, this delightful bag of refried madness was never filmed.

14. Godzilla: King Of The Monsters 3D

The thought of a 3D Godzilla movie with the King of the Monsters realised via stop motion animation and an enormous robotic head designed by Rick Baker is appealing, isn’t it? Godzilla had yet to terrorize American shores in an American production, but he nearly did in the mid 1980s with Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3D.

We’ve already said two magic words with “Rick Baker,” so now let’s add a script by The Monster Squad’s Fred Dekker for more nostalgia cred. Throw in a director, Steve Miner, already making a name for himself on the '80s genre circuit with the first two Friday The 13thsequels, who wanted to deliver an epic, Spielbergian Godzilla movie, and this one is starting to sound like a winner.

Now, stick with us on this, because we know it’s going to be a little difficult to swallow. There was a time when Hollywood, believe it or not, didn’t think that every single previously established piece of intellectual property was a sure thing. That, and a hefty (for the time) $30 million budget, kept Godzilla in his slumber at the bottom of the sea.

According to production artist William Stout (who built models and drew storyboards for the film, and whose work can be seen in films like the original Conan The Barbarianand Pan’s Labyrinth), Miner was viewed with some suspicion by the studios given the cost of the film. “In the view of the majors he was just some hack horror guy, and it would be insane to give him a big budget movie. If we could have come in with a Friday The 13th budget, it would have gotten a green light, but our budget was vastly higher.” 

Anyway, Steve Miner went on to direct many more things, chief among these in our hearts is 1989’s Warlockstarring Julian Sands.

15. Green Lantern 2/The Flash

Since Green Lantern was intended to truly launch the first DC cinematic universe for Warners (by 2011, Superman Returns 2 was stillborn, and it was increasingly obvious that Christopher Nolan had no interest in making his Batman movies fit in anybody else’s sandbox), they commissioned a script for Green Lantern 2 from Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenixscribe Michael Goldenberg.

But once the first film debuted to tepid reviews and box-office, the writing was on the wall, and it’s not clear just how far things got. But there was another movie in active development at the same time that Green Lanternwas hitting cinemas that was definitely going to occupy the same narrative space: The Flash.

Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim wrote a fun, faithful script, and a fella by the name of Greg Berlanti, currently making dreams come true as the showrunner of The FlashTV series, was set to direct.

That TV series, by the way, shares a number of similarities with this script, like Barry’s penchant for voiceovers, his living with the West family after the murder of his mother, and a wheelchair-bound Eobard Thawne who heads up STAR Labs (complete with a particle accelerator key to unlocking parallel universes).

To bring things full circle, it even featured a Marvel-style post-credits stinger that would have brought Hal Jordan to Central City to crack wise at Barry Allen... just to make it perfectly clear where everyone’s intentions were.

16. Halo

Well, something good came out of this, but we'll get to it in a second. Microsoft had, and probably still has, plans to bring the Halogames to the movies, and not in a small way. At the moment, there's a TV version, and the Halo: Nightfall film that was released on disc earlier this year. But no blockbuster movie.

The original plan, though, had Peter Jackson overseeing the transition of Halofrom videogame to movie, with Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Dredd) penning the screenplay. Furthermore, Neill Blomkamp was set to direct, and at that stage it would have been his directorial debut.

Microsoft clearly had confidence. In June 2005, it delivered Garland's screenplay to every major motion picture studio, along with a sheet of terms. The message was clear: agree to the terms, you could make an offer for the movie. And the clock was ticking.

Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't help itself here. While an expert in technology, movies clearly isn't its field, and it wanted a lot of control, and a lot of cash. Movie studios rarely give one, yet alone both. Reports suggested that Microsoft wanted $10m up front, and then 15% of the box office takings. Oh, and a guarantee to move the film into production quickly, with a budget of at least $75m.

Pretty much every studio turned the movie down straight away. Fox and Universal remained interested, and struck a deal to co-produce. Blomkamp would tell author Jamie Graham, for his book Generation Xbox, that "it was a clusterfuck from day one... There's no question that there was a clash of worlds, for sure."

Universal still stumped up around $10m in development costs, and WETA started work on props for the film. But as costs escalated, Universal wanted to trim the budget, and save on the cost of having Peter Jackson on the payroll. Microsoft wouldn't reduce its slice of the cake, nor would Jackson, and the Halomovie died fairly quickly. Whilst there's been talk of resurrecting it since, it still looks a long, long way off...

17. Hickok And Cody

In 1991, producer Joel Silver was still just about at the height of his powers, and the western was having its latest mini-resurgence. Dances With Wolves had won the Best Picture Oscar, and Unforgivenwas just around the corner.

Silver, thus, tried to package his own western, Hickok And Cody. This would tell the story of Buffalo Bill against Wild Bill Hickok, and Silver had a script under development. In the middle of 1991, Harrison Ford had been set to star in a movie for Paramount called Night Ride Down, but when that fell apart, he expressed his interest in the Hickok And Codyfilm. Silver would need to package it quickly, and as Premierereported at the time, he swiftly got on the phone to Die Hard director John McTiernan. Warner Bros. was linked with the movie.

But it was not to be. Silver, ultimately, couldn't convince John McTiernan to take the project on (he instead made Medicine Man), and without a top director on board, Ford too opted for another job instead. Ford did say he would like to return to Hickok And Cody at one stage, but it never happened. When he finally got round to a western - the far more recent Cowboys & Aliens - it would not be a memorable two hours at the movies...

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