5 Unhinged Movies That Thankfully Never Got Made
Getting a movie made is kind of like competing in a dog show: You have to jump through multiple hoops just to get a shot, and if you poop on the floor at any point, you can kiss your big win goodbye. Some movies that never end up passing muster could be great, but sometimes, it’s probably for the best.
David Mamet’s JFK Assassination Movie/Parade of People You Can’t Hire Anymore
He himself has a history of questionable judgment (see: claiming all teachers are secretly pedophiles), so the words “David Mamet’s JFK assassination movie” should set off alarm bells before you even hear who was supposed to be in it. That included Shia Laboeuf as Lee Harvey Oswald and Louis C.K. as Jack Ruby, at least until, according to Mamet, the project fell apart when everybody “started suing each other” for reasons he didn’t elaborate upon. Did we mention this was in 2022? That is, the casting decision and the pedophile teachers comment?
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Intellectual Disability Drama
You can kind of see the logic here: What’s the best way to show your range after an acclaimed drama about a preternatural genius? Go the complete opposite direction. That’s why Affleck and Damon announced in 1998 that they were working on a script for Half Way House, “based on stories pals told ’em about a home for the mentally impaired,” Variety reported. “While the duo were at first going to play workers in the facility, Damon now tells Affleck he wants to play one of the r-----ed residents,” they continued. Do we have to explain why this one didn’t happen?
‘The Lord of the Rings’ Starring the Beatles
Remember when the Beatles were movie stars? That was kind of weird, wasn’t it? Well, at one point, they believed in their star power so much that they spearheaded the development of an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings with a Brit pop twist. Fortunately, both Tolkien and their choice of director, Stanley Kubrick, turned them down. Paul McCartney would have played Frodo, Ringo Starr would have played Sam, George Harrison would have been Gandalf and John Lennon would have been Gollum. You’d think Yoko, right?
Orson Welles Wanted to Make a Movie About Jesus… Without Jesus
It’s not a huge surprise that the man whose name is all but synonymous with cinematic ambition would aspire to tackle the life of Jesus, going so far as to write to various Christian authorities for input, but his vision was somewhat, well, lacking vision. “The actual face of Christ would never be represented,” he wrote, “and the personality of Christ would remain, by the nature of the storytelling, unstated.” He wasn’t planning one of those artsy hot takes, either. “I wish to do nothing which could incur the displeasure of any Christian church,” he wrote. “In fact, I am convinced that a film which created controversy would not have the special validity I wish to achieve.” Fortunately, RKO gave him the red light, because that sounds boring as hell.
Pixar’s Animated Lizard-Boning Adventure
You know what’s missing from almost all of those 3-D animated talking-animal romps? Sexual coercion. That was going to be the basis of the plot of Newt, announced in 2008 as the story of “the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet (being) forced together by science to save the species,” only to find out that “they can’t stand each other.” Two years later, Pixar announced that they were scrapping the film for a variety of reasons, one of which you’d think would be the whole “mandatory mating thing,” but mostly because it was too similar to another developing project that ended up being Rio, which was… No, yeah, another movie about driving the last members of a species against their will to Pound Town.
Hope you had fun explaining that one, parents.
