# Greatest movies never made **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 9, 2019, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735 "2019-05-09T17:32:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Limmin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f04885/32.png) [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/101 "2019-09-06T19:09:17Z")
\>\> Ringworld Yeah, that would be a great one, if they could stick to what made the stories great. The “known space” universe of Niven has always been a favorite. I’ve seen traces of the idea of a huge ring structure in space with people living on it, popping up from time to time, such as the Halo video game series and the movie Elysium. But these little rings are tiny in comparison to the one in Niven’s books. This ring is utterly huge, being about 500 MILLION km in length (along the inner surface of the ring) and 1.5 MILLION km wide, with 1000 km high walls at the edges to keep the atmosphere in. The ring is spinning like a bicycle wheel, see, so centrifugal force is providing “gravity” and holding the atmosphere down. The size of the Ringworld is the orbital path the Earth takes around the sun. Has anything this vast appeared in a movie? In a realistic, meaningful way? I mean, a model of the Earth is present for some reason on this ring. It appears in flattened, map-projection form someplace along the surface of the ring. In the small section of the ring map where it appears, it looks as small as a fly squashed on a wall. (Insert flat-Earth jokes here) Could a TV series do the story justice? Sure, lots of colorful alien characters (Puppeteers, Kzinti), weird planets colonized by humans, an ongoing series of wars between Humans and Kzinti, “safe” interstellar travel, thanks to indestructible spacecraft built by the Puppeteers. I suppose the ring itself could be done using CGI. They’d have to have it appearing in the sky, as described in the books, as an “arch.” Maybe they could do it well, if sufficiently motivated… ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/102 "2019-09-06T20:27:36Z")
> [@Sir\_T-Cups](#): > > Was this a porn parody movie that was watered down? Or an Airplane!-style parody that never took off? Watered-down porn parody, definitely. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/103 "2019-09-06T20:36:56Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > George Lucas’s last 3 star wars movies supposedly he had them written > > I know they gotta different than what Disney’s putting out … ^ This. I’m not a huge fan of the prequels, but I’ll take ANY of them over TLJ (and rottentomatoes audience scores line up with this sentiment). God I hate TLJ with a passion. Another one was a Alien sequel by Neill Blomkamp. He was gonna bring back Ripley, Newt, Hicks and apparently pretend Alien 3 and 4 never happened (and I wish they never happened as well). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/104 "2019-09-06T20:38:28Z")
> [@Limmin](#): > > \>\> Ringworld > > Yeah, that would be a great one, if they could stick to what made the stories great. The “known space” universe of Niven has always been a favorite. > > I’ve seen traces of the idea of a huge ring structure in space with people living on it, popping up from time to time, such as the Halo video game series and the movie Elysium. But these little rings are tiny in comparison to the one in Niven’s books. This ring is utterly huge, being about 500 MILLION km in length (along the inner surface of the ring) and 1.5 MILLION km wide, with 1000 km high walls at the edges to keep the atmosphere in. The ring is spinning like a bicycle wheel, see, so centrifugal force is providing “gravity” and holding the atmosphere down. The size of the Ringworld is the orbital path the Earth takes around the sun. Has anything this vast appeared in a movie? In a realistic, meaningful way? > > I mean, a model of the Earth is present for some reason on this ring. It appears in flattened, map-projection form someplace along the surface of the ring. In the small section of the ring map where it appears, it looks as small as a fly squashed on a wall. (Insert flat-Earth jokes here) > > Could a TV series do the story justice? Sure, lots of colorful alien characters (Puppeteers, Kzinti), weird planets colonized by humans, an ongoing series of wars between Humans and Kzinti, “safe” interstellar travel, thanks to indestructible spacecraft built by the Puppeteers. I suppose the ring itself could be done using CGI. They’d have to have it appearing in the sky, as described in the books, as an “arch.” Maybe they could do it well, if sufficiently motivated… There aren’t enough Larry Niven fans out there to make this commercially viable. If Morgan Freeman can’t get _Rendezvous with Rama_ off the ground, even with Arthur C. Clarke’s name behind it,\* I don’t think the less-recognized Niven\*\* will carry the weight. You’re more likely to se a movie based on **Halo** first. On the other hand, they’ve announced a _Ringworld_ TV movie over two years ago. we’ll se if it happens. > **[Ringworld (TV Movie) | Sci-Fi](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3341646/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_1)** > > Ringworld: Directed by Alan Taylor. A tv series adaptation of Larry Niven's novel Ringworld (1970) _(not just 2001, but [2010_ and _Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World_ and lots of other things known to the General Public) \*\*Niven had an episode of the new _Outer Limits_ – “Inconstant Moon” – and an episode of the Animated _Star Trek_ – “The Slaver Weapon” and three episodes of _Land of the Lost_ > **[List of The Outer Limits (1995 TV series) episodes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconstant_Moon_(The_Outer_Limits))** > > This page is a list of the episodes of The Outer Limits, a 1995 science fiction/dark fantasy television series. The series was broadcast on Showtime from 1995 to 2000, and on the Sci Fi channel in its final year (2001–2002). > Dr. Simon Kress's (Beau Bridges) research for the government on Martian life is aborted because one of his specimens almost escapes into the natural environment. However, Kress does not agree with the abandonment of the project and decides to continue his experiments in hi... > **[The Slaver Weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slaver_Weapon)** > > "The Slaver Weapon" is the fourteenth episode of the first season of the American animated science fiction television series Star Trek: The Animated Series. It first aired on NBC on December 15, 1973, and was written by Larry Niven. It was based on his original short story "The Soft Weapon". This episode was expanded to become the first half of a full-length novel by science-fiction author Alan Dean Foster as Star Trek Log Ten. > Set in the 23rd century, the series follows the adventures of Capt... ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/105 "2019-09-06T20:48:03Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > One thing i don’t get is how people do facepalms over the very concept. > > The idea seems solid and affecting and quite doable. > > We’ve had nazi mistresses running prison films, decades of nazi zombie films. Decades of sad clown films. So how is a “Concentration camp prisoner dresses as a clown to ease the last days of the children there while dying inside every day.” not a solid idea? > > Ok i just read the synopsis. It needs tweaking. The film should be less about the clown and the ‘pied piper’ thing is SO heavy-handed it needs tweaking, but overall its a solid idea. Gotta rename the main character-“Helmut Doork” is too…doorky. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/106 "2019-09-06T21:47:58Z")
> [@Dale Sams](#): > > One thing i don’t get is how people do facepalms over the very concept. > > The idea seems solid and affecting and quite doable. > > We’ve had nazi mistresses running prison films, decades of nazi zombie films. Decades of sad clown films. So how is a “Concentration camp prisoner dresses as a clown to ease the last days of the children there while dying inside every day.” not a solid idea? > > Ok i just read the synopsis. It needs tweaking. The film should be less about the clown and the ‘pied piper’ thing is SO heavy-handed it needs tweaking, but overall its a solid idea. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Gotta rename the main character-“Helmut Doork” is too…doorky. You have to look at from the perspective of the early 70s. At that time, few mainstream movies had tackled the subject of the Holocaust head-on. 1965’s **The Pawnbroker** was a notable exception but most films like \*\*Judgment at Nuremberg \*\*and **Diary of Anne Frank** either dealt with the aftermath or what happened immediately before (e.g., **Anne Frank** ended just as the characters were caught and being sent to the camps). A lot of that had to do with sensitivity of the subject matter. The Holocaust was so horrific that the consensus was it was likely beyond dramatizing effectively and any attempt to turn the subject into some Oscar-bait melodrama would end up being a grave insult to both the survivors and those that died. The fact that the one person who was bucking conventional wisdom by doing a Holocaust movie was a loud overbearing comic on the downhill side of his career who was unfamiliar with the words “taste” and “subtlety” only added to the view that the project would be a disaster beyond comprehension. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2019, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/107 "2019-09-07T03:02:04Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The greatest movie we will probably never see? > “The Day The Clown Cried”. According to a [sidebar](https://books.google.com/books?id=bsf3-GfE_JoC&lpg=PA42&dq=Day%20the%20clown%20cried&pg=PA46#v=onepage&q&f=false) in a [_Spy_ magazine article about _The Day the Clown Cried_](https://books.google.com/books?id=bsf3-GfE_JoC&lpg=PA42&dq=Day%20the%20clown%20cried&pg=PA40#v=twopage&q&f=false), Jerry Lewis wanted to direct a film version of … … _The Catcher in the Rye_. Salinger said no. He also wanted to play Holden Caulfield. Let’s contemplate that never-made film for a moment. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2019, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735/108 "2019-09-07T12:23:32Z")
A movie I would love to see would be a film version of the Styx album _Kilroy was Here_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-movies-never-made/833735.md?page=5)