Jane Russell’s cleavage in The Outlaw delayed release for five years! More recemtly, Cabin in the Woods sat on the shelf for three years before it was finally released last year.
Take Me Home Tonight, starring Topher Grace and Anna Farris (Farris met her now-husband Chris Pratt during the shoot) filmed in 2007 but wasn’t released until 2011.
The Anna Paquin film, Margaret, was filmed in 2006 or 2007 and was released in 2011, held up due to lawsuits.
Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky was started in 1973 and not released until 1976.
Hotel Imperial began filming in 1936 with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer in the leads. By the time it was finished in 1939, Isa Miranda and Ray Milland had replaced them, and all of the major actors from the first version were gone. Margaret Sullivan had replaced Dietrich when the latter quit the production, but broke her arm and was gone by the final version. (The time lapse is especially notable, since movies in the 30s were usually shot and released in a few months.)
It’s an animated film, so the stages of production are different, but The Thief and the Cobbler was certainly under way in the early '70s (preliminary work having begun a few years earlier). After going through several partial fundings and a couple generations of animators, it finally saw a theatrical release in 1993–but editing continued.
Do you count movies that purposely took a long time to make? If so, Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday was shot over the course of five years and received its initial theatrical release earlier this year.
In that vein–the archival sequences in each edition of the Up series go back to the project’s origination in 1964; the most recent film premiered last year.
Bad movie favorite The Creeping Terror (1964) was shot in 1963 or 1964, but there’s no indication that it ever played anywhere until it started airing on televion in the 1970s. The Curse of Bigfoot (1976) was a re-working of a horror film that was filmed in the early 1960s, but was never released. The footage had just sat in a closet, until the Bigfoot craze of the late 1960s/early 1970s. The two brothers who had produced it found one of the actors from the earlier shoot, and shot an intro to the movie to try to tie it in with Bigfoot.
What do you mean by “shot”. Principal photography? Some background second unit shots? Stock footage?Some specific shots? Because it can vary and movie can have shots made in several different years.IIRC each of the Star Wars prequels began shooting 2 years before release. However they each had very extensive reshoots over the year following principal photography. The very last scene (or at least several frames of it) were shot 5 years before it was releases in Revenge of the Sith.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy had by the time of the the Return of the King several shots shot 3 years before release.
River Phoenix was filming the movie *Dark Blood *when he died of a drug overdose in 1993. The film remained unfinished for 19 years. Now, according to Wikipedia:
These are all great answers, thanks. The Outlaw and Jet Pilot are really good ones - what was it with Howard Hughes?
The films purposely shot over a long period films are interesting - I didn’t think of that angle.
And AK84, the Star Wars ones are worthy of consideration… I wasn’t aware of how extensive their production schedules turned out to be. I would say, for the purposes of the question, if there’s more than a few shots in the film - like an entire scene - filmed outside of two years prior, that’s fair game.
Now, here are a couple more I have - one I need help with:
Rebel Rousers, starring Jack Nicholson. A biker movie filmed in 1967, but not released until 1970, after Easy Rider was a hit.
I caught some of this on TV not long ago, but I need help in identifying it. It was a movie about a sort of scrawny young guy who decides to become a professional wrestler. Fairly low-budget, and had the look of being shot in about 1974 though I think it was officially released around '78…? Anyone?
When We Were Kings was shot in 1974 and released in 1997. It’s a documentary about the Ali - Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” in what was then Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo).
To get an idea of how long the Star Wars production schedule was, Ewen McGregor did principal photography for Attack of the Clones went and wrapped shooting on Blackhawk Down. The later was released in September 2001 and Ewen went back and continued to do shoots for Clones until early 2002.
Muhammad and Larry (1980) documenting the upcoming fight between Ali and Holmes was shot but never really aired. It finally aired in 2009 as one of the ESPN “30 for 30” episodes, with newly added interview footage interspersed.
Also, if you go back to television pilots, the uncut version of “Star Trek’s” “The Cage” with Jeffrey Hunter didn’t become available until the mid 1980s.
Also, the pilot for “Gilligan’s Island” didn’t air until maybe the mid 1990s.
Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind (1972), if it is ever edited, and released will be another long time. It was shot in the early 70s, so it’s 40 years and still going.
Fatty Arbuckle’s film Leap Year was completed in 1921, but never shown in the US until a special screening in 1981 (it was shown in Finland in 1924). It’s since been shown a few more times.
The Virginia Rappe scandal caused the studio to shelve the completed film.
I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re describing as these were shot for another movie but in 1999’s The Limey there are a number of scenes of Terrence Stamp as a much younger man playing the guitar, hanging with wife and friends, etc that are incorporated into the movie as flashbacks. These scenes originated in 1967’s Poor Cow.
I’d say this was the case for Eraserhead, which the OP listed. IIRC, Lynch spent almost five years shooting it in dribs and drabs.
I think The Adventures of Pluto Nash was edited at least twice and took some number of years to actually reach the screen. (I may be in a small minority, but I thought it had its redeeming qualities.)