The annals of cinema are filled with movies that your friends tell you that you just have to watch, but we often find ourselves just as fascinated by the films that never even made it to the theatres.
Whether they were just an awesome idea from a beloved director or a fully-fledged project which fell apart in the final stages, here are some of the movies that could have been among the very best. If only...
1. Darren Aronofsky's Batman: Year One
Aronofsky is know for his darkly intense movies – just look at Requiem for a Dream. So it should come as little surprise that he was approached to adapt Batman's grittiest and most-beloved origin story, Year One in 1999.
Warner Bros. went over the head of Joel Schumacher, who was keen on the project but was unfortunately also the director of 1997's infamous Batman & Robin.
Aronofsky wanted Clint Eastwood as his grizzled Batman, with Tokyo doubling for Gotham City. "The Batman franchise had just gone more and more back towards the TV show, so it became tongue-in-cheek, a grand farce, camp," he said in David Hughes's Tales From Development Hell. "I pitched the complete opposite, which was totally bring-it-back-to-the-streets raw, trying to set it in a kind of real reality – no stages, no sets, shooting it all in inner cities across America, creating a very real feeling. My pitch was Death Wish or The French Connection meets Batman."
The script was developed by Aronofsky and Year One writer Frank Miller, dramatically changing Batman's background to make his alter ego Bruce Wayne poor instead of a billionaire industrialist. They wanted to make the film gritty and realistic – Aronofsky believes it didn't get off the group because it was an R-rated movie about a character popular with young viewers.
Of course, six years later we got Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, kicking off a trilogy with a decidedly adult tone.
2. Quentin Tarantino's Casino Royale
2006's Casino Royale is widely agreed to have revitalised James Bond for another generation – but we're sure that Quentin Tarantino's take would have shaken up the franchise in a very different way.
"After Pulp Fiction, I tried to get the rights to Casino Royale away from the Broccolis, but that didn't happen," Tarantino told New York magazine. "That wouldn't have been just throwing my hat in the franchise ring; that would have been subversion on a massive level, if I could have subverted Bond."
Tarantino envisioned a period piece set in the mid-20th century, which would end with Bond killing Vesper Lynd for her betrayal.
But who would play this 007? Tarantino approached his favourite existing Bond, who was – naturally – Pierce Brosnan. Tarantino approached him in a hotel bar, and the pair apparently got "so fucking blitzed, completely".
Brosnan went to bat for Tarantino, but the filmmaker ultimately was unable to get the rights, although he has claimed responsibility for inspiring the Daniel Craig-starring Casino Royale adaptation that followed. Of course.
3. Steven Spielberg's Night Skies
Spielberg had declined to work on Jaws 2, but later regretted losing control of the property. So, he reluctantly agreed to develop a dark sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Based on the 'real-life' Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, where small alien beings allegedly attacked a Kentucky farm, Spielberg wanted The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's Tobe Hooper to direct.
But after the intensity of shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg began to have second thoughts. "Throughout Raiders, I was in between killing Nazis and blowing up flying wings and having Harrison Ford in all this high serialised adventure, I was sitting there in the middle of Tunisia, scratching my head and saying, 'I've got to get back to the tranquillity, or at least the spirituality, of Close Encounters'," he said in The Films of Steven Spielberg.
Taking the thread of Night Skies in which one of the aliens forms a bond with a young boy, and using rejected designs from the film, he developed ET: The Extra-Terrestrial instead. He would later abandon the creepy ET sequel Nocturnal Fears, and we're still waiting for Spielberg's alien horror movie today.
4. Nick Cave's Gladiator 2
After the success of Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning Gladiator, it's no surprise that a sequel was considered. But how to follow up the movie that ends (spoiler alert!) with the death of Russell Crowe's Maximus Decimus Meridius?
Crowe knew just the person to solve this riddle – his pal Nick Cave. Cave wrote a script which saw Maximus resurrected by the Roman gods to kill Jesus and then living as an immortal through millennia of conflict right through until the present day.
Scott was on board, but the studio apparently wasn't ready for a blasphemy scandal. "Hollywood just ain't ready for it yet," Cave told Digital Spy. Truer words...
5. Edgar Wright's Ant-Man
A decade in the making, Edgar Wright's version of Ant-Man was maddeningly close to becoming a reality before Marvel decided that his approach was too Edgar Wright-ish.
Mere months before production began, Wright was replaced by director Peyton Reed. Reed's film was perfectly enjoyable, but we can't help but imagine that Wright's would have been more memorable and better differentiated from other MCU origin movies.
We're only left to wonder how much of Wright and Joe Cornish's original script made it into the original film – although we know for sure that the giant Thomas the Tank Engine was theirs.
6. Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness
Del Toro's recent efforts haven't really set our world on fire, but he's definitely at his best when tackling dark and disturbing subject matter. And it doesn't come much more disturbing than cult horror author HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness - a tale of lost civilisations, secret monsters, hideous penguins and insanity in the deep Antarctic.
At one point, James Cameron was supposed to produce the film, with Tom Cruise signed on as the star. But the studio was unwilling to commit to a big-budget movie with an R rating. "The studio is very nervous about the cost and it not having a love story or a happy ending, but it's impossible to do either in the Lovecraft universe," said del Toro.
Ultimately, the project was killed because it was judged to be just too similar to Ridley Scott's Prometheus. Del Toro has mentioned At the Mountains of Madness from time to time since, but it seems doubtful that it will ever see the light of day.
7. Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune
Science fiction classic Dune is one of those books that is said to be unfilmable. David Lynch – who disowned his own attempt – would probably agree with you.
But before Lynch there was the multi-talented Alejandro Jodorowsky, who started working on a film in 1975 – one that was to feature music by Pink Floyd, designs by HR Giger and comics legend Moebius, and a cast including Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson and Mick Jagger.
Writer Frank Herbert discovered that Jodorowsky's script (said to be the size of a phone book) would have resulted in a 14-hour movie. Racking up massive costs even in pre-production, the film was eventually shelved, although Jodorowsky's epic vision is said to have influenced films from Alien and Blade Runner to Star Wars – not to mention the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky's Dune.
