This thread is for listing your favorite movies…with the only qualification being that they never actually existed.
This can include movies that have been/were planned, but never filmed in real life; or fictional movies seen or mentioned within other movies or TV shows.
My personal favorite? Anna Scott’s Helix, as seen in Notting Hill. (It’s like “Close Encounters meets Jean de Florette,” supposedly)
And according to a rumor in this thread, Tarantino was planning a movie called The Vega Brothers, as prequel to Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. My Dad would have just loved that movie, if it had ever actually been made.
I have a soft spot for the movie Maggie Smith won an Oscar for in “California Suite,” mostly because it starred her with James Coburn, who only appeared in the phony clips.
Others include:
“The Pickle,” the movie they were supposedly making in “The Pickle.”
The movie Steve Martin was making in “Bowfinger.”
“See You Next Wednesday,” a fake film title John Landis seems to like.
Warner Brothers used to use a fake film title whenever a movie marquee was shown. Eventually, they put out a film by that title, but I don’t recall the name.
“The Singing Cavalier” from “Singin’ in the Rain.”
“Mant”, from the movie Matinée, a 50s-style giant monster movie. When the movie came out they were talking of making a real Mant movie, too bad it didn’t work out, it would have been hilarious.
A few years ago, I would’ve said “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” but the Coens beat me to it.
I’d like to see any number of masterpieces from the silent era that are lost forever; notably the eight-hour version of “Greed” and the five-hour version of “The Scarlet Empress.”
And I’d love to see the Christopher Walken film in “Mistress,” whose title I don’t remember.
And of COURSE I’d like to see a Wallace Beery wrestling picture.
The epic version of Frank Herbert’s Dune as described in John Varley’s book Titan. Neither of the existing versions comes close.
Willis O’Brien’s King Kong vs. Frankenstein (really!)
Ray Harryhausen’s Creation
Mike Jittlov’s The Wizard of Speed and Time. I heard him speak back around 1981, after he’d made the short of that name, and he was describing the feature-length film he wanted to make of it. It’s true that eventually released a feature entitled TWOSAT in 1989, but it wasn’t at all the way he’d envisioned it. It was clear that he simply wasn;'t able to get the money needed.
Jim Danforth’s film about time-travelling Dinodaur Safaris (a la “The Sound of Thunder” and “A Gun for Dinosaur”)
Ray Harryhausen’s The War of the Worlds (he wanted to do it as a period piece, set in Victorian times. I’ve seen models and test footage. Great stuff. And his martian tripods would probably have moved like the ATATs in The Empire Strikes Back, the “strobing” of the stop-motion figures fitting in nicely with their mechanical nature).
The epic version of Frank Herbert’s Dune as described in John Varley’s book Titan. Neither of the existing versions comes close.
Willis O’Brien’s King Kong vs. Frankenstein (really!)
Ray Harryhausen’s Creation
Mike Jittlov’s The Wizard of Speed and Time. I heard him speak back around 1981, after he’d made the short of that name, and he was describing the feature-length film he wanted to make of it. It’s true that eventually released a feature entitled TWOSAT in 1989, but it wasn’t at all the way he’d envisioned it. It was clear that he simply wasn;'t able to get the money needed.
Jim Danforth’s film about time-travelling Dinodaur Safaris (a la “The Sound of Thunder” and “A Gun for Dinosaur”)
Ray Harryhausen’s The War of the Worlds (he wanted to do it as a period piece, set in Victorian times. I’ve seen models and test footage. Great stuff. And his martian tripods would probably have moved like the ATATs in The Empire Strikes Back, the “strobing” of the stop-motion figures fitting in nicely with their mechanical nature).
The first movie that I would love to see is Salome, the biblical epic from 1908 mentioned in the brilliant movie Forgotten Silver.
The second movie I’d like to see is Valis which is mentioned in the PK Dick book of the same name. It seems that the movie was actually based on the original draft of the book Radio Free Albemuth.
There is a subplot in the actual movie “the Player” about a movie (no title given) that Tim Robbins’ character is producing. The pretentious screenwriters pitching it brag that it will have: “NO stars! NO Julia Roberts! NO Bruce Willis! The story is about a woman who is found guilty of a murder she didn’t commit, and sentenced to the gas chamber. Her boyfriend finds evidence of her innocence, but is too late to stop her execution. She will NOT be saved, because THAT’S – REALITY!!!” (Or so the spastic screenwriter proclaims.)
Of course, the ending of “the Player” shows the screenwriters and a new producer at the advance screening of the film. Their movie stars - Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis. Bruce manages to rescue Julia from the gas chamber at the very last minute, even getting off one lame one-lliner before the final “the end.”
Catholic School Girls In Trouble from Kentucky Fried Movie made such a huge impression on my corruptable early teenage mind.
But more seriously, I would have liked to have seen a completed version of Fritz Lang’s silent action serial The Spiders.
The version of [Dracula that would have starrred Lon Chaney, Sr.
The proposed Billy Wilder/Marx Bros. United Nations farce.
The real Bruce Lee version of Game Of Death that he never completed, that documentary on AMC that showed more of the footage not used in the “spinning in his grave” version made after his death seemed interesting. I also would have liked to have seen what his version of Circle Of Iron would have looked like. I saw a book (wish I could remember the name to find it) several years ago that included some photos of Bruce in various test costumes for characters for the film among others (including one where supposedly he was done up as the Zatoichi character from the long running Japanese film series).
The epic version of Dune mentioned in Titan, is that the one that would have been directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky?
Anything starrying Troy McClure, particularly Hail to the Chimp and The President’s Neck is Missing!.
Also, my friend invented a board game in which you play the role of a studio head trying to package movie deals up, and it includes a bunch of awesome-sounding movies, which get even funnier as you cast real life actors into them. In particular, I’d love to see The Settlers of Catan: The Movie starring Mike Myers, Natalie Portman and Matt Damon/Ben Affleck (they function as a single unit).
Back in the late 30’s they started filming I, Claudius, with Charles Laughton as Claudius, Merle Oberon as Messalina, Flora Robson as Livia, and so on. They got about a third of the way through it, then Oberon was in a bad car accident, which would have made them really have filming problems. So the studio just tossed in the towel. Too bad, I saw parts of what was filmed in a documentary. Looks as if it would have been a classic.
