Between 2000 and 2005 I wrote quite regularly for Total Film. But the first thing I ever wrote for the magazine? Well, that’ll be this - a look at infamous projects that somehow failed to make it beyond the boardroom.
Of course, a number of these films did eventually see the light of day. But it’s weird the ones that didn’t. And it’s strange to see who wound up making the ones that did…
I Am Legend
Would-be director: Ridley Scott/Rob Bowman
Scripter: Rob Bowman
Not starring: Kurt Russell
What’s the plot?: A global biological disaster sees the last surviving member of humankind fighting for his life on an Earth where supplies are dwindling and the only other living things are a half-dead army of vampires. Adapted from the novel by Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man), I Am Legend was previously filmed as The last Man On Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971). Neither was a patch on the novel.
What happened?: Like The Island Of Doctor Moreau, I Am Legend (“The most influential horror ever written,” according to Stephen King) is a highly filmable book that consistently defies directors. Ridley Scott’s adaptation started to come apart during casting when the producers couldn’t decide whether Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom Cruise was better qualified to play the lead.
As soon as the Austrian Oak signed, Scott left the picture to make the desperate Demi Moore vehicle GI Jane. Arnie also walked when it became apparent that the budget wasn’t sufficient to cope with his $20 million payday demands.
Three years after it was pitched, it’s now rumoured that the films is being primed to start shooting in early 2001 with The X Files’ Rob Bowman in the director’s chair and Kurt Russell replacing Schwarzenegger. Since Matheson’s work is so good and the two earlier adaptations so average, it would be a shame if I Am Legend didn’t receive the full blockbuster treatment at some point.
Fantasy tagline: ‘The Last Man On Earth’s Last Day On Earth’
Hulk
Would-be director: John McTiernan/Jonathan Hensleigh
Scripter: Jonathan Hensleigh/Michael France
Not starring: Steve Buscemi
What’s the plot?: In the comics, an explosion turns Bruce Banner into a muscle-bound, rage-fuelled monster. On TV, a sabotaged experiment turns David Banner (Bill Bixby) into Lou Ferrigno, who uses his powers to battle bad landowners as he wanders America, Littlest Hobo-style. On film, who knows?
What happened?: There was a time not so long ago when all the major studios had films based on Marvel Comics characters in development. Alex ‘Repo Man’ Cox wrote a Doctor Strange script with the legendary Stan Lee, James Cameron put his name to a Spider-Man screenplay, his then other-half Kathryn Bigelow worked on an X-Men adaptation and Roger Corman planned a Fantastic Four picture.
Of these films, only Corman’s quickie hurdled the obstacles. All of the others hit budgetary stumbling blocks. Likewise Hulk. As the TV show illustrated, rendering the Hulk by spraying green paint on the nearest beefcake made for a not-so-incredible spectacle. For their version (slated for John McTiernan to direct), Universal’s solution was to capture the gamma man’s form using CG and CG only. Bodybuilder Joe DeAngelis posed for ILM’s animators, a few million went into R&D and then… nothing. Figuring it would require a budget well in excess of $100 million, a frugal Universal balked.
In late 1999, GoldenEye writer Michael France wrote a new Hulk screenplay which Jonathan Hensleigh (author of the earlier McTiernan picture) might direct next year. Universal are just waiting to see whether a) Sony’s X-Men does big box office, and
b) Spider-Man finds an audience. Rather like Space Dust and Deely Boppers, should it not get made, we’re sure we’d lean to live without it. Although casting the jittery Buscemi as Bruce Banner has plenty of appeal.
Fantasy tagline: “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
Noriega
Would-be director: Oliver Stone
Scripter: Oliver Stone
Not starring: Al Pacino
What’s the plot?: A biography of Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator seized by the US in 1989 for helping to turn Central America into the biggest coke factory outside of Atlanta. Stone was particularly keen to examine Noriega’s connections with the CIA. And the Colombian drug cartels. And the Irangate affair. And Fidel Castro.
What happened?: Having brilliantly essayed US Central American relations in 1986’s Salvador, Stone had no qualms about returning to the subject after all the fuss about Natural Born Killers. The writer/director certainly possessed the right tools to make a movie about the man known to his enemies as ‘Pineapple Face’. He had the perfect actor (Al Pacino, well-versed in coke-related matters from playing Tony Montana in the Stone-script Scarface), genuine locations and a thorough knowledge of US counter-insurgency. What’s more, Stone had carried out a three-our interview with Noriega in his Miami cell.
Although extensive screen-tests were held, Stone felt that the subject was too complex to become mainstream entertainment. He'd also have to reconcile spending $50 million on a man most Americans ranked somewhere between Saddam Hussein, Charles Manson and Barney The Dinosaur on their lists of Anti-Christs.
If cost and complexity weren’t good enough reasons for throwing in the towel, Stone had another decent excuse for wanting to back away from the project, self-preservation: “It’s a fascinating story but if I got too close to it, I’d be killed.”
Fantasy tagline: “Coke is it!”
The Ticking Man
Would-be director: Brian Helgeland
Scripter: Brian Helgeland and Manny Coto
Not starring: Bruce Willis
What’s the plot?: A man wanders the streets of New York City. Only he’s not a man but an android. And he’s carrying a nuclear bomb. And it’s primed to go off at any moment. AND SOMEBODY’S GOT TO STOP HIM! Original it might be, but the man-as-bomb concept sounds suspiciously similar to Philip K Dick’s ‘The Imposter’.
What happened?: That The Ticking Man was among the most coveted scripts of the early ‘90s was a real victory of hype over content. Written by Coto and Helgeland at the peak of Hollywood’s obsession with over-priced screenplays (hands up, Shane Black) the script was simultaneously sent to all the major studios in boxes containing alarm clocks set to go off at the same time.
This attention-throttling gimmick sparked a bidding war that bagged the pair a rumoured $1.75 million. Bruce Willis was tentatively signed to star while Helgeland put himself forward to direct. But when Willis’ popularly waned after the Bonfire Of The Vanities debacle, the studio dropped former fisherman Helgeland quicker than a month-old cod.
Two decades after it was first pitched, The Ticking Man script is still frazzling on the back burner. An anticlimax waiting to happen? Yes, very possibly.
Fantasy tagline: “Get ready for Boomsday.”
Ronnie Rocket
Would-be director: David Lynch
Scripter: David Lynch
Not starring: Kyle MacLachlan and Jack Nance
What’s the plot?: Lynch claim that the film details “the difficulties of existence” seems at odds with everything else that’s known about Ronnie Rocket. The title character is a spiky-haired dwarf who fires electricity from his fingers. Think atomic age child’s fantasy. Think Jack Frost with added electrons. Think very, very strange.
What happened?: LA 1986, and with Blue Velvet erasing the bad memories of Dune, David Lynch had the pick of the studios. But instead of pitching another dark ‘n’ sexy nutso-noir, the man Mel Brooks dubbed “Jimmy Stewart from Mars” touted a bizarre comedy called Ronnie Rocket.
Although he could guarantee his actors of choice (Kyle MacLachlan, Jack Nance and Twin Peaks’ Michael J Anderson as the “perfect” Ronnie), Lynch had more doors slammed in his face that an Jehovah’s Witness. “Since I don’t like to say too much about something, especially when it’s abstract, I told [the execs] basically it was about electricity and a three-foot-tall guy with red hair,” said the director re: one of his many attempts to convince producers to finance Ronnie.
Lynch was obviously confident about the film’s prospects: he’d started scouting industrial locations in glamorous Sheffield, with cinematographer pal Freddie Francis. Whatever the reasons for Ronnie not receiving a green light, it’s unlikely that the project was KO’d on the grounds of uber-weirdness. David Lynch is, after all, the man who a) convinced a major network to produce a murder-mystery featuring a donut-addicted detective and a backwards-talking dwarf, and b) made a highly entertaining feature about a septuagenarian cowboy and his lawnmower.
Indeed, since far stranger things have happened in the World of Lynch, we wouldn’t dare completely write-off Ronnie Rocket.
Fantasy tagline: ‘Rock the volt.’