Did You know that a 1993 production of The Fantastic Four was never released? Whenever you see a film trailer, you expect an actual film to follow, but that doesn’t always happen. While the prayer of every producer is that their film makes it to the theatres, lots of things happen between production and release, and some just don’t make it. When a film that is heavily advertised and anticipated fails to hit the theatres, you can’t help but feel sorry for the cast and the producers. Some of these movies made it all the way to post-production but have never seen the light of day.
The Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four is one of Marvel’s greatest treasures of all time, although there have been some flops like the 2015 release. Back in 1983, the German Bernd Eichinger and B-Movie producer Roger Corman’s company bought the rights to the FF franchise but didn’t produce any film and was about to lose the rights back to Marvel if they didn’t do it within 10 years. Roger decided to produce a low-budget release of the film and even released trailers and had the cast market it on both sides of the Atlantic. However, before its release, things went silent, and the film never saw the light of day. The producers later claimed that Marvel paid them to destroy copies of the film because they believed that the low budget movie would hurt the fame of the franchise.
All American Massacre
Horror doesn’t get any better than Tob Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the same can’t be said for the sequels and prequels that followed it. One of the most anticipated sequel/prequel of the horror film was All American Massacre, a project by William Hooper, Tob’s son. The interest surrounded Bill Moseley, who would retain the role of Chop Top, but finances seem to have failed the team. The shooting was completed, but William Hooper said he didn’t have the money needed to finish post-production. They started a crowdfunding page for the film with a trailer released, but the trailer seems to have done more harm than good as most fans dismissed it. The fundraiser failed, and the film hasn’t seen the light of day yet.
My Best Friend’s Birthday
Everyone loves Quentin Tarantino’s films today, and he has won lots of awards but how his first film was never released remains a mystery. Tarantino was struggling financially at the time while still training in acting classes, but he still employed the help of a friend to create a feature-length film with only $5,000 as his budget. Tarantino co-wrote, starred in, and also directed the film. He played the friend that is trying to do something to cheer up his friend, who had just been dumped. However, a fire broke out in the lab while post-production was happening, and at least half of the 70-minute film was lost. The rest can now be found online but was never released officially.
The Brave
Did you know that Johnny Depp is also a film producer? Well, at least he produced one film. The greatest attraction to The Brave was Marlon Brando, though, as he was a rising star whose performance in the film was obviously astonishing, just like his other films. The Brave was a story about a native American man forced to the brinks of life by poverty who then decides to star in a snuff film. The film was surrounded by big names as the story had been written by the legendary Gregory McDonald and was bound to be a great hit in the theatres until Depp’s fame started working against him. After the first screening, the media was critical of Depp for crediting himself for everything in the film forcing the actor to abandon the film’s release in the US.
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Empires Of The Deep
The film industry is one of the biggest victims of the US-China trade war, and Empires of the Deep is the perfect example of that. This $130 million Chinese film was expected to be China’s version of Aquaman, except it would have Western and Chinese Mermaids and Crocodile-like villains fighting and probably having some good times, but that didn’t exactly work out. The producers couldn’t agree on which draft to adopt, and so they kept changing directors as the story changed over 40 times. The production was intermittent, taking over five years as stars pulled out, including Olga Kurylenko. When the trailer was released, the ratings from critics were terrible, and the Chinese government will probably never allow such a sloppy film to come to the theatres.
The Day The Clown Cried
Yes! The clown that cried in this film was none other than Jerry Lewis playing a clown that tried to cheer up children at a Nazi concentration camp. The film was expected to hit the theatres by 1973 as the king of comedy was expected to both direct and star in it. Lewis was also happy about taking part in a film that brought a little change to how the Holocaust is portrayed in other films. Lewis went against the script and portrayed a sympathetic clown rather than a heatless selfish guy in the concentration camp, but that seems to have brought him problems with many people. He also had to finance the film from his pocket, and the quality was poor, and he allegedly got too ashamed of it to release.
Hippie Hippie Shake
Hippie Hippie Shake garnered a kind of cultic fan base all before a single shot of the film was seen. The attraction was Sienna Miller, who was starring as Louse Ferrier, the girlfriend to the Australian Publisher Richard Neville portrayed by Cillian Murphy. The entire movie was based on the memoir of Richard Neville on how he gets prosecuted for publishing an obscene release of his magazine Oz. Everything was fine with production but not the people involved. Miller had a disastrous PR after her affair with Balthazar Getty. Other people also mentioned in the film were uncomfortable with how it portrayed them and Sienna Miler starring in it, and that seems to have prevented its release years after production was completed.
Don’s Plum
Leonardo Di Caprio and Tobey Maguire were once young stars seeking to make it in the film industry, and you would expect them to do what other young people do. They both took part in a film called Don’s Plum. The film, which also starred Kevin Connolly, is about a group of spoilt brats that bring different girls to a hotel named Don’s Plum to hang out. It was a low budget film, and it portrayed the two stars in a bad image that they don’t want to be associated with them because of their advanced careers today. Di Caprio and Maguire sued the producers because they allegedly participated in the film only as a favour and didn’t expect to be used as the main actors. The film has never been released commercially despite multiple attempts by the producers.
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Dark Blood
The 1998 film The Vanishing remains one of the greatest works of the producer and director George Sluizer. Dark Blood was supposed to be his greatest work in the 90s, if the late River Phoenix, who was his main character, hadn’t died after shooting only 80% of the film. Dark Blood was about a man who believes that the end of the world has come after he loses his family to nuclear radiation. The Man played by Phoenix then kidnaps a couple whose car breaks down in the desert where he has created his camp awaiting the end of the world. We will never know what happens afterwards because Rivers died, and the film was never released commercially.
Gods Behaving Badly
A comedy about gods should probably be avoided if this 2013 film is anything to go by. The film was highly anticipated because of the prominent cast members enlisted including Christopher Wilken. The film portrayed gods like Hades and Zeus living in New York and behaving in a rather ungodly manner. While the cast was great and the production on time (mostly), the critics weren’t so kind to it at all. The reviews both in the US and in Europe were grim, and the film seemed like a flop before its release. It never went past its first studio screening, so no one knows what it looks like.