Long-in-development Movies Completed by someone else

Cafe Society
1

I re-watched The Thief and the Cobbler recently. It was a long-term project of Richard Williams (who directed the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit and, as we’ve been discussing in the Christmas Carl thread, the 1971 animated version of a Christmas Carol). He’d been working on this in the 1960s, got financing after Roger Rabbit, then when Aladdin came out the financiers got rid of Williams and got cheaper studios to finish it, shooting new scenes that turned it into a musical. They released it as The Thief and the Cobbler. Later another studio got hold of it, changed it, and released it as Arabian Knight. Richard Williams died in 2019. But a cadre of TRue Believers put together a version faithful to Williams; original vision, which you can see on YouTube as The Thief and the Cobbler – the re-cobbled cut. There have been three versions of this I know of, the most recent from this year. The re-cobbled cut removes the additions and fills in gaps with pencil tests and the like. The film had work in it from classic animators (like Grim Natwick, who was one of Betty Boop’s animators!), and voice work from Vincent Price, Anthony Quayle, and others (they were supposed to get Sean Connery to voice the hero Tack’s only line, but he never showed up).

The animation and sequences are really impressive, especially considering that this is all pre-CGI. My only complaint is that it’s overlong. Well worth seeing, though

This is the Mark 4 cut – the most recent is Mark 5

The Primevals – I learned about this from an issues of Cinefantastique from 1978, when it had already been in the works for years.

This was animator David Allen’s vision of a really immersive Harryhausen-esque dimensional animation adventure film. He died in 1999 without completing it. But they saved everything and , again, True Believers stepped in with a GoFundMe effort that got it made. The film was released this year by Full Moon Entertainment, and it really does look gorgeous. The story is creaky and old, and I doubt if anyone would make a film like this today – it’s got too much of the White Big Game Hunter and Western Audacity about it. But the images and animation look fresh, and it’s got a good score. Don’t worry too much about logiocal lapses and inconsistencies. Just watch it and go with the flow.

I suppose that Kubrick’s A.I. fits in here, as well. It only really took off after Kubrick’s death and Spielberg’s taking the helm. Unlike the previous two, it didn’t have to deal with keeping going for long periods with no funding, but had major studio support behind it.

Phil Tippett is another animator (who also work with rod puppets), known for his work with Spielberg and George Lucas. His effort Mad God was in the works for 30 years before being released in 2021. Tippett is still very much alive, so this didn’t have to be completed by someone else, but I figured the lonf production time earned it a place here.

Sorta related to this is the class of films that were butchered by studio executives and only later restored, often by the original director. **The Wicker Man ** falls into this category (the original version by Hardy. The original film ran 100 minutes, but it was cut down to 87 for its 1973 release. It has been successively restored, the most recent Director’s Cut (which I haven’t yet seen) running 99 minutes.

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil wasn’t released in a butchered version, but almost was. When the Universal executives (who were distributing it) saw it, they despaired that the downer ending would kill the film. It was being edited by two separate teams, one of which was to give it an upbeat ending. It still didn’t get released, and Gilliam took out a full-page ad in Variety asking Spielberg to release the original cut. He also showed the film (without approval) to film critics. The LA Film Critics Association awarded him Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Director. After that, the studio relented and let Gilliam edit a 132 minute version (ten minutes shorter than hi original cut).

Wikipedia has a page of Films with the Longest Production Times, many of which I’m not familiar with. I’d like to see The King and the Mockingbird, a French animated film which was in production for 33 years. The film was taken away from the irector and released not as he wanted The original director got control of it again, and finished it the way he’d planned.

2

I remember when Arabian Knight was released. It did not run long enough. A cartoon on airships (or was it balloons?) was added. While, of course Price does not appear onscreen, this is the last film he did.

For various reasons, I never got around to seeing it. Now, thanks to you I can!

3

I don’t know if this is true. Although the film was released in 1993 in its first incarnation, they had done a lot of work before, which included recording voices. Anthony Quayle, for instance, voiced the Sultan, and he died in 1989. So this might be the last film released with a performance he provided, but it was not the last thing he did.

4

Bah. This is what I get for posting in a hurry.

5

“Orson Welles began filming this picture in 1955 and worked on it off and on over the years.”

“Finished by Jesús Franco and Patxi Irigoyen in 1992. (Orson Welles died in 1985).”

“According to Spanish film critic Juan Cobos, who had watched an early rough cut of the movie while Orson Welles was still filming material for it, this new version cut and reshaped by Jesús Franco doesn’t resemble Welles’ vision at all.” - Don Quixote (1992) - Trivia - IMDb

6

Another Welles film that fits the OP is Touch of Evil, which was released in a heavily edited and reshot version against Welles’ wishes. Several decades later, Walter Murch re-edited and released a new version more in line with Welles’ original vision of the film.

7

This is hilarious to me. Jess Franco made hundreds of films, mostly incompetent sleazy exploitation junk. This sentence is the equivalent of “This John Ford film was completed and released by Albert Pyun.” or “Following Kubrick’s death, the project was edited into shape by Uwe Boll.”

8

A.I. was going to be Stanley Kubrick’s movie, but Spielberg took it and made it after Stanley’s death. The part with the advanced robots at the end? Yes, it was in Kubrick’s script as well.

The Primevals was partly produced and made by David Allen, but he died in 1999 and it was only finished and released in the last year. He is still credited as director, but a lot of stuff was finished by someone else.

9

Re: Brazil

"During his trouble with the studio, Terry Gilliam asked Daily Variety for a full-page ad, which cost around $1500 at the time. He had it bordered like a funeral invitation and it said: “Dear Sid Sheinberg, when are you going to release my film? Signed: Terry Gilliam.” - Brazil (1985) - Trivia - IMDb

Mr. Sheinberg was the head of Universal Pictures at the time. Mr. Spielberg had no connection to the project.

10

As I was reading the OP, I was wondering if Mad God was going to get an honorable mention, because it was the first thing that came to mind as I was reading. I’m glad to see I wasn’t wrong, although exactly as you point out, it doesn’t quite qualify.

It’s absolutely worth a watch to any who are interested, but don’t go into it expecting to understand much if anything. It’s not that sort of movie. Oh, and no traditional dialog either. Best watched with good friends in a relaxed circumstance where you can just take it all in, and then spend a few hours trying to put it together in your minds over booze or coffee!

11

Yeah, didn’t the original guy just finish the movie?

12

Yes, but our OP acknowledged that:

:slight_smile:

13

I’m no movie buff by any measure, but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; from release as BBC4 radio comedy through other formats and a much stop/start project as a feature film eventually released in 2005 after the venerable Douglas Adam’s death probably fits the OP.

14

Another Terry Gilliam semi-qualifier: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. He started working on the project in 1989, the finished film came out in 2018.

15

But he made it, right?

16

Erich von Stroheim’s Greed was cut down from eight hours to two hours for its initial release (just over 100 years ago, to the day!). A four-hour reconstruction was released in 1999, using still images of lost scenes.

17

Well, yes, he was the director all the way through, but the cast and crew changed quite a bit in the intervening years. I suppose I was stretching the definition of “completed by someone else” a little too much.

18

I recommend to you the first half of Franco’s movie Count Dracula. It’s amazingly faithful to Stoker’s novel – the first movie to do so that I can recall, long before Coppola. And it stars Christopher Lee as Dracula! In a non-Hammer fim! And with a Moustache! Herbert Lom is Von Helsing! Klaus Kinski (years before Nosferatu) is Renfield! It’s great!

Until about halfway through. I don’t know if Franco stopped caring, or the money ran out, or what, but the production turns to crap. They try to scare us with a room full of obviously stuffed animals. But the first half is worth watching.

19

Well, not really what I’m looking for. Although the movie is based on Adams’ work, the eventual movie wasn’t one of his projects, didn’t use his script, wasn’t directed by him, and was panned by his fervent fans. It’s not really Adams’ film.

Adams apparently did write the script for the BBC TV version (as well as, of course, the original radio series), which captures the feel of his ideas admirably. So Adams, far from being the creator of a long-in-development work, was actually able to get the TV version of his work broadcast while he was still writing radio scripts. It’s not his fault that other people took a long time to get around to making a big budget movie out of it. His vision had already been onscreen and available for years by that time.