10 Best Films Never Made
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Ever wonder what movies might have been made but for one reason or another just never made it to the screen? In Hollywood, considering the cutthroat nature of finances, old grudges, and the massive egos, it’s easy to imagine that there’s been a few gems that have been killed mid-production.
According to a just-released list, quite a few legendary directors and projects have been put to rest before they even hit the editing room. All of this begs the question of why and what would become of these films. Would we be discussing them as failures (therefore justifying their cancellation), or would the discussion swing more into the realm of classic? While we’ll (mostly) never know, it’s always interesting to dream.
The newly compiled list includes a film called Megalopolis which was set to be directed by the monolithic Francis Ford Coppola. The film’s script centered on the aftermath and reconstruction of New York City after a mega-disaster. Reportedly, Coppola shot over 30 hours of footage around NYC, but then a tragedy struck which threw the film’s future into uncertainty: September 11, 2001. According to Coppola, “It made it really pretty tough…a movie about the aspiration of utopia with New York as a main character, and then all of a sudden you couldn’t write about New York without dealing with what happened and the implications of what happened. I tried.”
Obviously, Coppola’s attempt to finish the project and bring it to the screen wasn’t enough. Considering that he created perhaps the 20th century’s most nightmarish view of humanity in Apocalypse Now!, he was probably onto something truly visionary.
Other projects that are stuck in developmental hell or simply have been put to sleep are David Fincher’s Rendezvous with Rama (based on one of the most important sci-fi books of all-time), Alfred Hitchcock’s Kaleidoscope (based on the life of a necrophiliac murderer), Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, and Orson Welles’ adaptation of Heart of Darkness (which Coppola adapted to make his Apocalypse Now!). However, while it certainly would have been exciting to see Welles’ version of the Joseph Conrad classic, it’s likely that Coppola wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it had it been completed, thus robbing us of the terror that was Coppola’s Vietnam narrative. Though Welles’ ditched Heart of Darkness, his next film would become his magnum opus, Citizen Kane, which is often cited as the greatest film ever made.
If you’re interested in reading the entire list, it can be found here. It’s always a pleasant thought that these 10 films may see the light of day.
