I’m surprised this isn’t already here, but* Boyhood *started filming in 2002, then by design was filmed a little at a time before it was completed and released in 2014.
This thread was started before 2014.
Note that filming on Boyhood began in 2002 and finished in 2013. The only work done on it in 2014 were the usual things done after filming like editing. Boyhood started filming in the early summer of 2002 (when Coltrane was still 7 and his character would have just finished first grade) and finished filming in the late summer of 2013 (just after he turned 19 and his character would have just started college). I think this means that Coltrane is actually a year older than his character is supposed to be, since most people finish first grade at 6 and start college at 18:
Plan 9 From Outer Space was mostly shot in 1956, finished in 1957 and didn’t get a proper release until 1959.
Caligula was mostly filmed in 1976, the hardcore scenes were shot in January '77 without the knowledge of the original director or principal cast, and then there was a bunch of fighting over the final edit and litigation until it finally premiered in 1979.
Wasn’t Valmont on the shelf for a while before they released it to compete with Dangerous Liaisons?
Mario Bava’s Rabid Dogs was shot in 1974 and released in 1998.
Movies that sat for a long time on the shelf:
Movies that were filmed over a long time:
Spoilsport.
Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace:
[Quote=IMDb]
The film was shot between October 20 and December 16, 1941. During 1943, the film was shown to the Armed Forces overseas, but went unissued domestically until its Manhattan debut at the Strand Theatre on September 1, 1944, followed by the nationwide release on September 23. Warner Bros. had been contractually required to wait for the Broadway play to finish its run, which finally occurred on June 17, 1944. By the time the movie opened, Priscilla Lane and Warner Bros. had ended their association.
[/quote]
Ed Wood’s “Night of the Ghouls” was filmed in 1959 and not released until 1982 (23 years) because Wood never paid the lab bill.
I want to say The Battleship Potemkin, but I know I am probably wrong or something. It was half finished? And then they took forever to finish it? They took a break for WWI…The guys raising money for the film “borrowed” some of the financing? I seem to remember there were two release dates and the one in country (The Soviet Union) was like 14 years after the release out of country (or something).
Aren’t there some zombie movies that fit this category?
One that hasn’t been released but will be available for release in 2025, is Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried, which was filmed in 1972. Lewis refused to release the film but recently donated the film to the Library of Congress, with instructions that it not be screened for 10 years. That will be 53 years.
The Current War, now in theaters, was mothballed for two years after the Weinstein Company collapsed in disgrace. (It was re-tooled as a “Director’s Cut”, having been shown in Toronto in 2017 to little acclaim.) Wonder what else is sitting in storage?
Not mentioned yet, Blue Sky, shot in 1990, then Orion Pictures went under. When released in 1994 it got Jessica Lange an Oscar.
there’s an ed wood movie that sat in a box for like 30 years because no one ever paid the film lab’s bill that worked on it so they kept it … (according to Leonard maltin’s movie and DVD guide ) I forget the name of it tho…
Filming for Before I Wake was completed in late 2013. The movie got delayed, and delayed again, and delayed a third time, and then the studio went bankrupt. Eventually it was shown at an international film festival in mid-2016, then acquired by Netflix and finally shared in the US early 2018.
It will be interesting to see if The New Mutants actually comes out in April 2020. It was originally supposed to come out in early 2018 but has already been delayed 3 times and subjected to reshoots.
They Shall Not Grow Old, 2018 but filmed in 1918 at the latest? Maybe colorization for the latter part and such updates the time frame, so a big asterisk is needed.
Apparently this one, at a guess:
Tarsem Singh’s The Fall (2006) took four years to make. He financed it himself and it involved a great deal of location shooting. I wouldn’t call it a great film, but it’s certainly worth seeing, even if (as Ebert said) it’s for no other reason than it exists. “There will never be another like it.”
A *really *big asterisk! 
Yes, the footage for the film was shot during WWI, but it was only colorized and assembled into a film by Peter Jackson in the past few years. So it doesn’t really meet the criteria for this thread, since it wasn’t a completed film that was shelved.
Still very much worth watching, though.
Now released as of 2018, handily enough that IMDB page was updated to reflect that too.