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A
Arrive Alive
C
Carry On Spaceman
Creation (1931 film)
D
Dark Blood
Dark Blood was cancelled halfway through filming due to the death of its star River
Phoenix.
Dark Blood is an unfinished film (circa 1993) about a character named Boy (played by River
Phoenix). Boy is a widower who lives as a hermit on a nuclear testing site, waiting for
the end of the world while making dolls that he believed had magical powers. Boy ends up
helping a couple (played by Jonathan Pryce and Judy Davis) when their car breaks down as
they are traveling through the desert. Dark Blood was written by Jim Barton and directed
by George Sluizer.
Dark Blood was never completed due
to the death of River Phoenix in 1993. The crew was 11 days shy of completing production.
After Phoenix's death, his mother was sued because of loss of expenses, as the film had to
be abandoned.
As of late, what was finished of the film is owned entirely by director George Sluizer
(also known for the movie The Vanishing). He has hinted that he intends to use it as
footage in a documentary about River's life.
The Day the Clown Cried
The Devil and Daniel Webster (2001 film)
Dus (1997 film)
Duce Coup
G
Game of Death
I
I, Claudius (film)
It's All True (1942 film)
L
The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)
M
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
My Best Friend's Birthday
O
P
Q
Que Viva Mexico
The Overcoat (animated film)
S
Something's Got to Give
T
The Tel Aviv Post Massacre
The Thief and the Cobbler
Time Machine (film)
Don Quixote by Orson Welles
The story of the Mexican wanderer confounded Welles for more than 20 years. While the
Quixote role was one that was close to Welles heart, he was unable to play the role
himself due to his large stature. Welles began filming in 1955, continuing piecemeal
throughout the years wherever he had enough money to mount production again. During the
70's, members of the cast died, which threw a bit of a wrench into the continuation of the
project. This didn't stop director Jess Franco (who has produced hundreds of cheap horror
flicks), whom Welles worked with during his Chimes at Midnight put together pieces of
Welles Quixote along with other scraps of film for an unauthorized, unfinished film. While
pieces of Quixote exist as a historical piece (and are available in several Welles
documentaries) it's unlike that anything more will come from Quixote.
The Other Side of the Wind by Orson Welles
While every director undoubtedly has a large number of unfinished films in their vault,
Welles is different in that he had films bits and pieces of films intending to assemble
them at some point. His version of Othello took 3 years to complete, with Welles often
running out of money mid-production, flying off to star in some films, and the
reassembling the cast to begin shooting again. The Other Side of the Wind was Welles'
story of a director that had "reached the end of his rope". The film starred
John Huston in the role as the flustered director. I have read that the film is 95%
finished, and just needs whatever finishing touches to be ready for release, and this
seems to have been the case for years and years. At issue are ownership of the film, and
permissions from those who need to give permission. Peter Bogdanovich is involved in the
project and it seems like it will someday be available to the public.
Don Quixote by Terry Gilliam
Yes, the Cervantes novel makes yet another appearance on the list. It would seem that
filming Quixote is the thematic equvalient of flying a plane into the Bermuda Triangle. It
looks nice enough upon entry, but good luck coming out the other side. Well this
assessment isn't truely fair, since IMDB lists 29 direct adaptations of the story, but
both Welles and Gilliam fell into it's spell. Regardless, Gilliam moved forward on his
story casting one Jean Rochefort in the lead role as Quixote. Problems arose quickly and
furiously as storms destroyed sets and locations in Spain. Rochefort was bucked from his
horse and prognosis of his injuries continues to worsen as the delays continued to pile
up. Eventually, the relatively small budget was overrun and next to nothing was avaialable
to show for it, and the production was shut down. Gilliam is a very talented director and
the Quixote tale would have been an excellent addition to his filmography but it was not
meant to be. Thanksfully, the tale of Gilliams doom is documented forever in the film Lost
in La Mancha.
Napoleon by Stanley Kubrick
Unfortunetly Kubrick's Napoleon never got too far outside of the script stage, which makes
it a dime a dozen amongst filmmakers abandoned projects, but it seems like Kubrick did
invest himself personally in the project for years. The screenplay is relatively available
on the Internet and I have heard on the Kubrick newsgroup, is going to be officially
published eventually. It reads very quick, and has a great mixture of entertainment along
with historical significance. Kubrick hired several historians to begin collecting data
and forming a concrete timeline of Napoleon's life for Kubrick to follow. In addition he
had costume design work ongoing and was attempting to collect enough extras to properly
stage the massive battles. In fact Kubrick had contacted several foreign govenments in an
effor to rent out a massive number of troops for shooting. The costuming of 10,000+ troops
in genuine French Revolution garb was going to burden the effort, so Kubrick was looking
into heavy paper uniforms, which he believed would be convincing in his long shots. The
cost factor was what weighed Napoleon down, and ground production to a halt.
I, Claudius by Josef Von Sternberg
One of the most infamous misfires in cinema, I was unaware of until beginning research in
this topic. Robert Graves released I, Claudius as two novels and director Von Sternberg
hired actor Charles Laughton to play Claudius in his adaptation of the books. Laughton had
trouble with the title role, but Von Sternberg wasn't exactly an approachable director and
production stammered forward. Merle Oberon was cast as Messalina, Claduis' wife and was
injured during filming in a car accident. Von Sternberg took the opportunity to cease
production of the film midstream. A documentary exists, including clips from the film,
titled The Epic that Never Was. Interestingly enough, the surviving footage generally gets
rave reviews and makes many film fans wonder what might have been had Von Sternberg
continued with his tale.
Other films definetly deserve a mention. Hitchcock began work on a film that had various
names, but is often referred to as Kaleidoscope. Hitch intended to shoot (and some footage
exists) the film with a handheld camera, and follow a killer around and he did various
grisly things. Lots of the red stuff and nudity was to be featured (I talk more about this
in my Hitchcock Special Topic). The Jerry Lewis film The Day the Clown Died featured a man
locked up in a concentration camp, trying to amuse the soon to be murdered Jewish
detainees. At the time that idea was considered racy, and the film is supposedly in a
nearly completed state, but has not ever receieved a public release (it's at least 40
years old). The Apt Pupil got the big screen treatment from Bryan Singer, but a version
began filming with Ricky (call me Rick) Schroder sevearl years beforehand. Funding dried
up, and the film was put back in the vaults.
Filmmakers always have several pots simmering on their stove, but sometimes they move
forward on a film, and still, there are so many variables in the equation and that things
don't work out. We are left to wonder what might have been.
U
Uncle Tom's Fairy Tales
Other Side of the Wind
W
When Knighthood Was in Flower
Who Killed Bambi?
The Works (film
Fantastic Four ; Roger Corman film on pirate VHS
Orson Welles's Don Quixote
Although Orson Welles left a myriad of incomplete films during his 50 years in cinema, Don
Quixote was his most enduring passion. He began filming in 1955 and continued in Mexico,
Spain and Italy over the following decades, bringing together the cast and crew whenever
he could raise the finance. Indeed, Welles was still talking about finishing the film
months before his death in 1985. Don Quixote was Welles's great obsession. "What
interests me is the idea of these dated virtues [like chivalry] and why they seem to speak
to us, when by all logic they are so hopelessly irrelevant," he said in an interview,
revealing that this was a key theme of his films. In Welles's film, Quixote was a timeless
figure who leaves 16th-century Andalusia to confront modern Spain and the modern world.
The film mutated countless times over the years. Unable or unwilling to finish it, Welles
continued proliferating images and stories, not unlike the style of Cervantes' book. All
that was left at the end of Welles's life was 300,000ft of film footage poorly organised
and distributed across the world.
A hastily "restored" version of the film, put together by Jess Franco in 1992,
director of exploitation films such as She Killed in Ecstasy, was received with revulsion.
It offered only occasional glimpses of Welles's brilliance and Francisco Reiguera's superb
performance as Don Quixote.
Over the decades, Welles indiscriminately accepted films in order to raise finance for
this film. This was not the only sacrifice he made. At the end of editing Touch of Evil,
he rushed off to Mexico to film Don Quixote. And Universal studios, taking advantage of
his absence, radically re-edited his dark noir masterpiece.
Alfred Hitchcock's Kaleidoscope
In the mid-1960s, with his career at a low ebb following the critical failure of Marnie
and an ambivalent response to Torn Curtain, Alfred Hitchcock worked on a groundbreaking
experimental film that would have represented a radical change in his style-possibly
heralding a new late phase of cinematic creativity.
Kaleidoscope was the story of a serial rapist and killer. It was initially envisaged as a
kind of prelude to Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. There would be several murders,
including an attempt on the life of a decoy policewoman - an idea that particularly
excited Hitchcock - and a Psycho-style stabbing. And the director intended to use story
details from infamous UK criminal cases (including an acid bath murderer and a
necrophile).
This could have been Hitchcock's darkest film. Indeed, Hitchcock himself worried that some
scenes might be too frightening for the audience. In a bold move, he wanted to tell the
entire story from the perspective of the killer, envisaged as an attractive, vulnerable
young man (Hitchcock later decided that the character would be gay). More radically, he
planned to experiment with innovative filming techniques such as hand-held filming and
natural light.
Unfortunately, MCA studios turned the film down as they apparently thought that the
protagonist was too "ugly", a decision that rankled with Hitchcock for the rest
of his life. All that remains now of his experiment is an hour-long tape of silent footage
- and the tantalising prospect of a new wave of Hitchcock films in a new vérité style,
influenced by the European avant garde, to whom he had become a deity.
Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon
In 1968, Kubrick embarked on one of his most ambitious and personal projects thus far: an
epic biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, with Jack Nicholson playing the emperor. Napoleon
was a lifelong obsession and Kubrick intended to cover the entire sweep of his life, with
full-scale reconstructions of his battles, requiring some 50,000 extras (Kubrick often
noted the similarities between filmmaking and mounting a battle campaign).
The director worked for two years on the film, immersing himself with a team of
researchers in a minute analysis of the Napoleonic era, developing a day-by-day account of
court life and a catalogue of 15,000 images of the period. With characteristic ingenuity
he found special lenses to film exteriors in the evening and low-cost paper fabric for the
soldiers' uniforms. He even got the Romanian army to agree to provide tens of thousands of
men for the battle scenes.
In 1969, however, MGM studios balked at the cost of Kubrick's epic, despite the
unprecedented success of his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick went to Warner Brothers,
where he made A Clockwork Orange, but he never gave up hope for Napoleon. If he had
achieved his vision, A Clockwork Orange might never have been made. That film's success
sealed his relationship with Warner Brothers and led to his masterpieces Barry Lyndon and
The Shining.
Unreleased
Films
By Steve.Zeitchik
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
October 23, 2010
The motion picture "Case 39" was released in the U.S just three weeks ago,
(September 2010) Cooper and Zellweger began shooting the film in the fall of 2006
— so long ago a young senator named Barack Obama was still nearly six months from
announcing his run for the presidency and Facebook was just opening to the general public.
In the years since, Cooper has gone from a supporting actor on television's
"Alias" to the top of the Hollywood heap. But he was not able to lift "Case
39" with him. The movie has struggled to reach even $12 million in domestic box
office, and Cooper did nothing to call attention to the horror movie.
"Case 39" was stuck in a little discussed corner of the industry: movie
purgatory, where films with marketable stars — not just Cooper but Matt Damon, John
Cusack, Eddie Murphy and Mel Gibson — can linger for months, even years, trapped by
marketing disagreements, creative clashes, executive shuffles, money shortfalls or the
judgment that they are such surefire flops that it makes no sense to throw good money
after bad and distribute them.
In a larger sense, experts say, the trend speaks to the financial house of cards that is
the feature film these days. Although they seem to arrive by the bundle at the multiplex
every weekend, studio-produced movies now take more time and money to make and market than
ever before — and then go before an ever-smaller and more fickle theater-going
audience. In the old days of movie distribution — say, the early 2000s — many
orphaned movies might have been granted a pass out of purgatory with a direct-to- DVD
release. But the cratering of the home video market makes that less economically
attractive. A direct-to-DVD release also risks offending the sensitivities of stars and
other creative people the studios want to work with again in the future.
These shelved movies often have their champions, who might note that at least one modern
classic, "Diner," and one recent Oscar winner, "Slumdog Millionaire,"
were temporarily orphaned. But often these champions find themselves speaking into a void.
Mike Medavoy, a longtime producer and studio executive who was instrumental in such hits
as "Annie Hall" and "Terminator 2," has watched as his passion
producing project, " Shanghai," has remained on the shelf at the Weinstein Co.
for nearly three years. "I try not to get upset because it's something I can't
control," said Medavoy. "But every once in a while I do say to myself: 'I wonder
if that movie will ever come out?' "
Directed by the Swedish filmmaker Mikael Hafstrom, "Shanghai" stars Cusack and
an all-star international cast that includes Ken Watanabe, Franka Potente and Chow
Yun-Fat. The World War II mystery-noir is built on an appealing premise: a man arrives in
Japanese-occupied Shanghai to investigate the unexplained death of a friend. But the movie
has languished amid reports within the industry of creative disagreements, corporate
financial difficulties and a perceived diminished audience for large-scale period dramas.
(Contacted by The Times, a Weinstein Co. executive said that a contractual obligation that
the movie comes out in China first is the primary source of the delay. With the film
released there last summer, he said, the company is making plans to bring out
"Shanghai" in the United States in early 2011.)
"These delays do seem to be happening a lot lately," acknowledged Walt Disney
Pictures Distribution President Chuck Viane. "I don't think there's any single
explanation, but I do wonder how much changing regimes has to do with it."
"Case 39," for instance, went through as many executive changes as Zellweger has
gone through hairstyles. The Paramount Pictures co-president who initially oversaw the
film, Brad Weston, was ousted and replaced by John Lesher before the movie could come out.
With the film a priority for his predecessor, Lesher opted to postpone. Before he could
get around to bringing out the movie, Lesher himself was pushed out, and the film repeated
the cycle with current Paramount Film Group President Adam Goodman.
When it did land in theaters, "Case 39" received dismal notices (just a 27.2%
positive rating on the compilation website Moviereviewintelligence.com) and was shunned by
its stars. It took nearly half a dozen calls over three days to Cooper's representatives
to ask him to explain why he didn't want to talk about his movie when it first came out.
In the end, he didn't want to talk about that either, declining all comment.
Zellweger, whose stock has dipped precipitously since she made "Case 39" (she
was three years removed from an Oscar for the Civil-War drama "Cold Mountain"
when she shot the horror movie; she's had largely poorly reviewed flops since) also didn't
want to be associated with "Case 39." Like Cooper, she did no promotion for the
movie, and her representatives declined to comment for this story.
In some cases, dipping star fortunes may actually be the reason the movie goes on the
shelf.
The most conspicuous recent case of a tarnished reputation sending a film to purgatory
involves Mel Gibson. His offbeat dramatic comedy "The Beaver" was for years the
hottest script in Hollywood. It began shooting about a year ago with Jodie Foster as its
director and was on track to come out this fall — until Gibson's alleged rants at
ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva surfaced. The film now has no release date.
Damon, Mark Ruffalo and Anna Paquin star in perhaps the most prominent of all orphaned
films, "Margaret" a drama about a teen girl (Paquin), her teacher (Damon) and a
tragic bus accident. "Margaret" was the follow-up to screenwriter and playwright
Kenneth Lonergan's directorial debut, "You Can Count on Me," which was released
in 2000 to critical acclaim and two Oscar nominations. Lonergan began shooting
"Margaret" more than five years ago. Since then, the project has been plagued by
extensive reshoots, endless edits and two complicated lawsuits.
Lonergan has continued writing for the theater and the movies, but he hasn't directed
another film, and "Margaret" remains locked in the safe. If the movie does ever
hit theaters, it may seem like a time capsule: Paquin, now the 28-year-old star of the
sexy television series "True Blood," was 22 then and played a vulnerable
teenager.
It seems surprising, with Hollywood wanting to recoup every last penny it sinks into a
film, that many of these movies wouldn't even get a token release. But experts say that an
ever-intensifying media culture and high marketing costs have changed the game.
For much of the 20th century, studios churned out movies with regularity, and often at
manageable costs. If one film had creative or marketing problems, executives would still
put it in theaters, because if it didn't succeed there was another film coming up right
behind it. But movie distribution is a riskier enterprise these days. The major studios
now are also subsidiaries of publicly owned international conglomerates and must answer to
corporate executives and shareholders.
"The stakes are too high to just push out a movie that you have questions
about," said a marketing executive at a studio that has a film in purgatory who asked
not to be identified because of sensitivities with the filmmakers. "You have to make
sure it's going to earn back what you're going to put into it, which is usually a
lot."
The prospect of release limbo doesn't always spell an unhappy ending. The recent Oscar
winner "Slumdog Millionaire" was headed for the shelf after Warner Bros. closed
the division that was to release it in 2008. After some well-timed calls between
high-ranking Warner Bros. and Fox executives, the movie was successfully picked up by Fox
Searchlight, which shepherded it to eight Oscars and more than $350 million in global box
office.
And in the early 1980s, MGM was prepared to send to purgatory a movie that mainly featured
people sitting around a restaurant talking. Frustrated, producer Mark Johnson and director
Barry Levinson sneaked out a print and showed it to New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael,
who at the time wielded an influence no single critic can claim today. "It was the
only way we could pressure MGM to release it," Johnson said.
The film was "Diner," and Kael loved it, pledging to write a good review that
would also criticize MGM for its dithering. Johnson informed the studio, which relented
and agreed to release it. The movie went on to earn an Oscar nomination, launch several
careers and become one of the most influential movies of its time.
"It was a bold move, but we had to do it," Johnson said. "I only wish there
was a way like that to get a film out of limbo today."
By Steve.Zeitchik
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
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