The Devil In The White City has been promised for ages and keeps going into turnaround with rights bouncing back and forth. Katheryn Bigelow was scheduled to direct it and decided to direct The Hurt Locker instead. Considering how edge-of-the-seat-teeth-clenched harrowing and tense The Hurt Locker is, I’m sure she would have done a magnificent job.
Now there’s talk of David Fincher directing, which would be ok too. This is one story I wouldn’t mind seeing two different version of. Whichever, I won’t believe it until the lights go down and the credits roll.
Edit to add, we were supposed to get a film of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, possibly even with Ken Russell directing. Someone could still do it, just not with the actual members of Genesis. Peter Gabriel’s a little too old to be playing a wiry Puerto Rican punk.
Here’s the cover of Noah II – note that it’s “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture”
Aside from the book cover, I’ve never seen or heard a thing about this project.
I was going to say a film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars – so longpromisedto us – but it turns out that it finally came out . . . kindasorta . . . Would you believe Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris?!
Kung Pow 2 now has a “release date” of 2010 but we were told it would be in 2004, then in 2005, then in 2006, etc. and now this. So it may yet materialize but I think it will be another Duke Nukem Forever.
Schwarzenegger was also in talks at one point to do a version of I Am Legend. I don’t know if this was the script that Will Smith eventually ended up doing.
wiki “*At the very end of the film, there is a teaser trailer for History of the World: Part II, narrated by Brooks, which promises to include Hitler on Ice, a Viking funeral, and Jews in Space. Despite the preview, no sequel has been released, and the “Part I” of the film’s title is merely a historical joke…”
*
One movie I wish had been made was Orson Welles’* Heart of Darkness*. This was the movie that Welles originally wanted to make as his first film. But the studio wanted him to make something more commercial so he made Citizen Kane instead (after considering making the movie version of the then current thriller The Smiler With a Knife).
“The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell. I remember reading YEARS ago that Brad Pitt was interested in making the movie version. Also that it was put on hold until the CGI special effects were advanced enough, which should be around, oh, say, 2010. Well, I guess Avatar used up all the ‘Sparrow’ special effects!
And whatever happened to the live-action “The Last Unicorn” by Peter Beagle??? Was supposed to star Mia Farrow and Jonathan Rhys Myers. Was in development and then - nothing. I know there’s an animated version made in the 70’s that fans just love, but there is NO EXCUSE for not making a live version. None. With all the crap Hollywood churns out…
I seem to recall that Monty Python was supposed to do another movie called The Meaning of the Meaning of Life. But I have never found anything to verify that.
I got my information from the message boards for The Last Unicorn at IMDB.com. There has been discussion there about a live version for years, and fans were very excited when Mia Farrow (who did voice work on the animated one) was going to be cast as Molly. The deal fell through and a lot of the threads were deleted, but there are dreamers who still post there, making casting suggestions.
The most interesting, IMO, is It’s All True – what’s interesting is not so much the film itself as the story of how it was killed, as told in the 1993 documentary of the same name.
To add another Arnie project that never happened, “Tooth Fairy” starring the Rock was originally written for Arnie in 1992. Imagine: “It’s not a mo-lar!”
