For every movie made, there are hundreds of rejected screenplays, germs of ideas, and screen tests that just never worked out.
But sometimes, a filmmaker comes up with a vision that's so ambitious or interesting that it just doesn't work out. Even great filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Guillermo del Toro sometimes can't get the funding they need. And some great novels, begging to be adapted into novels, just can't get off the ground.
Here are the stories behind 18 of those amazing-sounding movies. Far from being mere great ideas from great filmmakers, these movies made significant steps toward production, but never got off the ground.
"Napoleon" by Stanley Kubrick
What it's about: "Napoleon" was going to be Kubrick's biggest movie. He spent decades preparing the film, filling boxes and boxes with research material, doing location scouting, and writing up casting notes. It would have been a sweeping epic covering Napoleon Bonaparte's early life, going into his political career and death.
What happened?: Rod Steiger's film "Waterloo" made it to theaters first in 1970. It flopped. Studios didn't want to spend money on what would have been an expensive historical epic, so the project was shelved.
Some of its DNA made it into his 1975 film, "Barry Lyndon," another sweeping historical movie. Kubrick kept iterating on "Napoleon" throughout his lifetime, hoping it would get made, but he never was able to finish it.
Chances it'll still happen: Likely — but not in the way Kubrick envisioned. Kubrick himself died in 1999 at age 70. Instead, Steven Spielberg, who made "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" after Kubrick's death, is planning to produce the project as a miniseries for HBO. David Leland is updating the script, and a bunch of high profile directors — Ang Lee, Baz Luhrmann, Cary Fukunaga, Ang Lee, Ridley Scott, and Rupert Sanders — have been named as potential directors.
Meanwhile, a 1969 draft of Kubrick's screenplay made its way online, and it's beautiful. You can read it right here.
A "Justice League" film from George Miller
What it's about: In 2007, Warner Bros. planned to have "Mad Max" director George Miller make "Justice League: Mortal." It was before the time of Zack Snyder's reign, and "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" was just a twinkle in Kevin Tsujihara's eye.
The movie was going to have D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Armie Hammher as Batman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Adam Brody as The Flash, Common as Green Lantern, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, and a bunch of other superheroes.
What happened?: The timing didn't work. The writers' strike stalled things at Warner Bros., and they were depending on an Australian tax-rebate legislation to shoot the movie, but it didn't work out.
Chances it'll still happen: Unfortunately, Zack Snyder, not George Miller, was chosen as the "visionary" behind Warner Bros.' DC franchise films. Miller moved on to directing "Mad Max: Fury Road" and has another "Mad Max" film in the works. Warner Bros., meanwhile, is going full steam ahead, with its own "Justice League" movie planned for 2017, directed by Snyder.
"Dune" by Alejandro Jodorowsky
What it's about: In the 1970s, film producer Arthur Jacobs tried to get Alejandro Jorodowski — known for cult classics like "The Holy Mountain" and "El Topo"— to adapt Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel "Dune." The story follows Paul Atreides, "who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family--and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream."
Jorodowsky convinved luminaries like Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, Mick Jagger, Amanda Lear, and Pink Floyd to agree to work on the movie.
What happened?: It was too much. The vision was too wild, and it would have been too expensive for a not-so-commercially friendly director like Jorodowski.
Jacobs settled on David Lynch to make the movie. It was said to be pretty wild and over three hours long, but Universal made him cut it down into a two-hour movie. It came out in 1984 and flopped, but became a cult classic. David Lynch doesn't like to talk about it, calling the production "a nightmare." Frank Herbert, for what it's worth, loves it.
Jorodowsky's version remains a great could-have-been, and a documentary about the failed making of the film called "Jorodowsky's Dune" came out in 2013.
Chances it'll still happen: If Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí, and Gloria Swanson were still alive, the world will be a better place.
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