Did you know Nicolas Cage almost played Superman, and in a movie directed by Tim Burton no less? Now, it is hard to imagine Cage in the role as across his four decade long career, he has played a variety of characters, but nothing like the Man of Steel. But in the 1990s, he had signed up for the role of DC superhero and was to be paid $20 million, a huge sum those days. But The project fell through due to whims of producer Jon Peters, who demanded strange changes in the script like Superman should not fly and that he should fight a giant spider in the third act.
A biopic on American writer and intellectual Gore Vidal was in development at Netflix. But unfortunately for the makers, it was Kevin Spacey who was starring in the lead role. Space was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple men and women at the height of #MeToo movement in 2017, and the film was shelved. Based on the Jay Parini book 'Empire of Self, A Life of Gore Vidal', the biopic was written and directed by Michael Hoffman. Michael Stuhlbarg, who was in the film as Gore's partner Howard Austen, told The Hollywood Reporter, “I understand what’s going on. Honestly, we all have some hope that perhaps … over time there will be a chance for people to see it in the light in which it was meant to be seen.”
While Tarantino's first directorial film is known as 'Reservoir Dogs'. he had actually made his debut with his unreleased 1987 film, 'My Best Friend's Birthday'. The script was originally Craig Hamann's and Tarantino and he worked on it to make a black-and-white film that clocked 70 minutes, with both Harmann and Tarantino also starring in the film. It appears the rolls of the film were lost and Tarantino was not satisfied with the final product. He edited together 36 minutes of footage from the scenes he liked and discarded the rest.
A Gil Junger directorial the romantic comedy starred Evan Rachel Wood (now known for HBO series 'Westworld') and Thomas McDonell in the lead roles. The film's production. The film was a follow-up to Junger's 1999 film '10 Things I Hate About You', not a direct sequel. The filming did begin but was interrupted after Wood became pregnant and regime change at the production company. The filming was later delayed indefinitely after Wood departed. She was sued for $30 million for breaching her contract, and the lawsuit is apparently still going on. The film, it is perhaps safe to say, is gone for good.
The iconic Hong Kong martial artist and actor Bruce Lee sadly died while filming 'Game of Death' in 1972. While 100 minutes of footage was already shot, it was not nearly enough to release as a finished film. A lot of it was actually for the film's climax. However, in 1978, footage from the film was used in an entirely new film with new story, also titled 'Game of Death'. Lee's scenes were finished by his stunt doubles.
2006's 'Revenge of the Nerds' was a remake of the popular series of comedy films of the same name that released in the 1980s. The Kyle Newman directorial had Adam Brody, Dan Byrd, Katie Cassidy, Kristin Cavallari, Jenna Dewan, Chris Marquette, Ryan Pinkston, Efren Ramirez, and Nick Zano in the cast. Like the original, the story was going to follow a group of nerds in a college being harassed by the jocks. The film was abandoned after only a couple of weeks of filming after the film's location Emory University's officials did not like the script.
Lee Grant's 'Broadway Brawler' was going to be a sports comedy like Tom Cruise's 'Jerry Maguire' and starred Bruce Willis as a retired ice hockey players who begins a relationship. However, the film's production was stopped only after 20 days of filming due to less than ideal relationship between Willis and Grant and Willis' dissatisfaction with performances of many members of the crew. A new director Dennis Dugan was brought in but it was too late. The film was abandoned.
It is unthinkable to most of us how one could refused to greenlight a movie by one Alfred Hitchcock, but Universal Pictures did exactly that. In 1967, Hitchcock had an idea for a film for a prequel to his 1943 movie 'Shadow of a Doubt'. The story followed a young and good-looking man who preys on young women and kills them. The character was reportedly inspired by real-world English serial killers like Neville Heath and John George Haigh. But the studio was apparently put off by sex and violence and despite Hitchcock's protestations that he would make it under $1 million and with a cast of little-known actors, the project was abandoned.