The Man Who Saved the Empire, about British PM David Lloyd George, was finished in 1918 but got tied up in litigation (among other things Lloyd George decided he didn’t want it shown). It was thought to have been destroyed for years, but in 1996 was rediscovered, retitled The Life Story of David Lloyd George and screened publicly for the first time. Ballyhooed as a lost silent classic (I saw it, and it’s a big snooze).
Thanks to this site, I remembered that I actually paid to see Slapstick in the theater. Dear Og.
This is one I could be wrong about, as I only have one shot to support my hypothesis:
Lethal Weapon The First, released 1987, contains a line of dialogue stating that Riggs’ wife was “recently” killed in a car crash. At the end of the movie, Riggs (Mel Gibson) is visiting his wife’s grave. The date of her death says “1984.” Somehow I don’t see three years as “recently”. Now, various explanations for this are possible, but the one that has always stuck in my mind was that this movie was put on the shelf for a couple of years, then released as Mel Gibson got more famous. YMMV.
The film’s Wikipedia article indicates that the script was written in “mid-1985,” and that Gibson and Glover had been signed to their roles in “early spring 1986,” and that Gibson did two months of physical training before shooting started. So, probably shot in the summer or fall of '86, it seems like.
I’m a little late replying to this one…
There was a “psychotronic” video store in the DC area–I think it was Video Vault–that offered this as a VHS rental in '88 or '89, but had to pull it from circulation almost immediately, and then it was released theatrically in 1990. My guess is someone decided it was unscreenable, but changed his mind.
I was interested in seeing O.C. and Stiggs because I had read the original stories and wondered what Altman would do with them. The two were basically an amoral pair of nihilistic teens and it would be a challenge to make them work in a movie. It’s such a bizarre combination and I’m not surprised that Altman failed and wondered why he decided on the project.
I was a fan of 8 Simple Rules during its run from 2002 to 2005, and then was very excited for Kaley Cuoco’s new sitcom The Big Bang Theory in 2007.
Early on in the run of TBBT I started looking for Kaley Cuoco movies, and found one with a stellar cast I was super excited for: Lucky 13. Starring Lauren Graham, with Kaley Cuoco and Debra Jo Rupp? Supporting roles by Harland Williams, Jenna Fischer, Sasha Alexander? How did I miss this movie in 2005?!
Turns out it was a straight-to-video release in 2005, after having been filmed in 1999. I was watching this movie mainly for Kaley Cuoco, but she was only 13 years old playing the little sister. Blech.
Aside from age weirdness – a 13-year-old Kaley Cuoco in a 2005 movie was very jarring – Lucky 13 may be the least watchable trainwreck of a movie I’ve ever seen in my life. Truly horrid.
Aside from the lifeless tone of the film, it departed from the source material on one important point: It tried to justify the main characters’ bullying of the Schwab family. The original stories just had them as, like you say, nihilistic teenagers. The movie had a setup where Schwab senior had cancelled an insurance policy on O.C.'s grandfather, who had severe dementia, so all the bullying behavior was recast as a fight for justice, which just didn’t fly.
The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus
Filmed in 1968…finally released in 1996
A movie I just mentioned in another thread; Shortcut to Happiness. Shot in 2001, theatrical release in 2007, home release in 2019.
The Rolling Stones commissioned a documentary back in 1972 called Cocksucker Blues. It showed lots of drug use and other things the band thought they could get in trouble for. The Stone went to court to stop it from being released. A verdict was reached that said the movie could only be shown if the director was physically present. It’s coming up on 50 years without a legit release. I assume that if it does get released they would at least change the name.
Man in the Mirror (2008)
From IMDB:
“According to the DVD commentary, the first shot was filmed in 1970, while the last shot was filmed in October of 2006. This is because advances in film restoration made it possible to finish the film, so director Frank Weston added new footage to complete it.”
I was going to mention Clifford, starring Martin Short and Charles Grodin, but looking back through the older posts, someone actually did it already. I also didn’t initially realize how old this thread is - it began in 2013.
Clifford is a movie that I absolutely adore, although my opinion seems to be in a very small minority. I think it’s a great example of a surreal “chaos comedy” and that Short and Grodin are both fucking hilarious in it, but the majority of moviegoers seem to have despised it when it was released.
Oh. I guess Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid doesn’t work, then, either.
Not just someone - me!
It was actually shot in early 2005 and originally scheduled to be released later that year. But Kenneth Lonergan wanted it to be three hours long and the studio wasn’t keen on that (reminiscent of Orson Welles and The Magnificent Ambersons many decades earlier, although at least in this case they didn’t burn the negative). I have seen the 150-minute version and would call it a masterpiece, although I wish he got to release his full version. It really seems like it should have been a limited series for HBO or something.
I’ll go with Limelight. Made in 1952 but not really released in America until 1972 and incidentally winning Charlie Chaplin his only Academy Award.
Production on Game of Death began in 1973, and was halted when Bruce Lee left to film Enter the Dragon. Lee died that same year before completing GoD, which was eventually finished using stand-ins, and released in 1978.
Stories are coming out about upcoming blockbuster * Chaos Walking*. It is such a mess that it’s supposedly unreleasable. Let’s see how long it takes to come out.
The New Mutants released posters and trailers way back in 2017 but has no firm release date as of yet. The studio was bought by Disney in the interim, so maybe it will just end up on their streaming service.