ALL SCI-FI

[Andrew Kidd]

One of the most fascinating parts of reading up on the history of the film is the "what if-" detours that arise when you learn about unmade or uncompleted film projects. For instance, Bill Warren's great book KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES features an entire appendix listing unmade science fiction films of the 50s, and there have been several books on the topics, although the quality has been variable. When tackling unmade science fiction films, they frustratingly usually stick to unmade entries in popular and familiar franchises, or films that were actually made, just not in the versions originally planned. I'm more interested in original films that were never made at all. Such as these potential classics:

A TRIP TO MARS: James Whale's planned space opera, to be made sometime between his Frankenstein films.

WHAT MAD UNIVERSE? Probably my favorite of all unmade science fiction films, this was to be Federico Fellini's adaptation of Fredric Brown's classic science fiction novel about a writer trapped in his own sci-fi universe. I've read it, and it would fit perfectly in Fellini's own oeuvre, and it may even have helped to inspire 8 1/2. I can actually imagine it resembling one of the "pop-art" style science fiction films that came out of Europe in the Sixties, and starring Marcello Mastroianni and either Anita Ekberg or Ursula Andress in the female lead.

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES: As Bill Warren noted right before the appendix of unmade Fifties science fiction films, it could have been worse...but this would have been the exception, as Bradbury had written an outstanding script. What if someone such as John Huston or Orson Welles had directed it?

THE DIPLOMAT: Another movie mentioned in KWTS, this tantalizingly would have been a science fiction satire written by William Faulkner and directed by Howard Hawks about an alien who arrives in Washington; I wonder if Hawks intended for it to respond to THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL the same way RIO BRAVO was his answer to HIGH NOON? It's also too bad he never made a science fiction film together with Leigh Brackett.

The unmade Willis O'Brien films: So many of them. Everyone focuses on King Kong vs. Frankenstein, but that project never seemed promising to me; War Eagles not only was much more interesting, but the script by Forbidden Planet's Cyril Hume was excellent, and it would have been up there with Kong itself as one of the great fantastic adventure films. I also wish The Vines of Ceres and The Last of the Oso Si-Papu had found funding, although my favorite title is Last of the Labyrinthodonts.

I'll have more titles tomorrow.

[ralfy]

Jodorowsky's Dune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0cJNR8HEw0

[Bud Brewster]

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Andrew, you continue to do exactly what I hired you for: pose intriguing questions, provide interesting information, and demonstrate that a college education is worth the money!

I went looking for a few pictures from War Eagles to add to this thread, but I didn't expect to find twelve that were so good, so I decided to put two of them here and then start a thread for War Eagles that presented all twelve.

I'm bettin' you'll head over there to expound on that fascinating subject quicker than a Viking warrior can say, "Ya, dat big bird ban be my ride home, you betcha'!"

* Update: Click on the first photo and go to the War Eagles thread.




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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Andrew Kidd]

Thank you Bud! This second list consists mostly of more recent movies that never got off the ground. I remember hearing of most of them from the old Corona Coming Attractions website, SciFi Wire and other now mostly defunct sites that I miss a lot. And like Jodorowksy's Dune, most of them were supposed to be adaptations of classic science fiction novels, and rights problems no doubt played a major in many, if not most of their cancellations:

1. I, ROBOT. Probably the most famous never-made science fiction classic, Harlan Ellison had published in book form his beautifully-written screenplay adaptation of his friend Isaac Asimov's classic robot stories. At one point, David Twohy was in talks to finally direct the film. While I enjoyed the 2004 Alex Proyas film, it just wasn't the same thing.

2. RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA. Arthur C. Clarke's story of a massive alien object that mysteriously enters our solar system has long been under option, with Morgan Freeman as producer and David Fincher as director. Personally, though, I don't think Fincher would be the right director for the project. After seeing Interstellar, I think Christopher Nolan would be ideal.

3. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. Robert A. Heinlein's classic novel was planned to be made into a movie as long ago as 1992, to star Tom Hanks! As it turns out, Hanks is a major science fiction fan, and is an especially big fan of Heinlein and Clarke (who he introduced at the 2000 Oscars). Had it been made five or ten years later, I would have cast Matt Damon or Paul Bettany as Valentine Smith.

4. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS. Another Heinlein classic, this one has already had a script written for it by Tim Minear, a longtime Joss Whedon collaborator who was probably responsible for most of the good things in Firefly. Unlike the film version of Starship Troopers, Minear's adaptation promised to treat its source material with respect.

5. RINGWORLD. Larry Niven's classic hard science fiction novel has been promised a screen adaptation at various times in various forms. At one point, it was going to be a movie directed by special effects master Phil Tippet; later it was going to be a SciFi channel original miniseries. Another miniseries adaptation was promised a couple of years back, and we're still waiting.

[Pow]

Here are some of the unrealized films of FX legend Ray Harryhausen that I think would have been terrific.

The Abominable Snowman.

Food Of The Gods.

The Island Of Dr.Moreau.

The Time Machine.

R.U.R.

[Bud Brewster]

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In the spirit of continued support for the topic, here's some sci-fi eye candy I whipped up, using MS Paint and Paint.net to make these girls as pretty as the prom queen!

Enjoy!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Andrew Kidd]

[Andrew Kidd]

Belatedly adding some more! I remember reading about these on the Corona Coming Attractions website years ago. It's too bad most of them were never made...yet. I also remember reading about AVATAR on that old site a good decade before it was actually made (I wonder if I was the first to notice the similarities to Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe"; I distinctly remember writing to the site pointing this out).

COSM: Adapted from the novel by my favorite living science fiction writer, Gregory Benford, about a physicist who literally creates a universe of her own through particle collisions. With Benford being a working physicist himself, both the science and the scientists are extremely credible in this one, and if made, it could have been a first-rate thinking person's SF film along the lines of CONTACT, to which it would be inevitably compared. Angela Bassett and Dustin Hoffman were to star, with Jan De Bont, but unfortunately, Benford told me the script was awful. However, he did like my idea of having a new script by Steve Barnes written instead, as well as my casting suggestions, Olivia Spencer in the lead as Alicia Butterworth, and either James Woods or Colm Feore as Max Jalon.

BLOOD MUSIC: From the novel by Greg Bear.

STARTIDE RISING: From the novel by David Brin. There, a movie for each "Killer B" of hard science fiction! (Although I like to add two more, Baxter and Bova, to that list).

EXPEDITION: This was to be adapted from the picture-novel by Wayne Barlowe, best known for the great Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestials, Instead, it lead to the Discovery Channel miniseries ALIEN PLANET.

PROJECT: MANKIND: Another adaptation of popular picture book of speculative biology, this time from Dougall Dixon's AFTER MAN, depicting how life may evolve millions of years from now. And once again, it led to a Discovery Channel miniseries instead, THE FUTURE IS WILD.

THE MERCURY EFFECT: An original movie for a change, although it very much resembles Poul Anderson's BRAIN WAVE in its plot outline, about what happens when animals the world over get a sudden boost in intelligence.

HYPERION: Dan Simmons wrote is possibly the finest science fiction novel of the past thirty years, and not surprisingly, it has frequently found itself under movie option. At one point Leonardo DiCaprio wanted to star in it, and more recently Bradley Cooper has tried to bring it to the screen, not just acting it but writing the adaptation himself. It has more recently been announced that entire Hyperion Cantos series may be adapted as a TV miniseries in the new future, and that seems to me be the most sensible way to do it.

[Andrew Kidd]

Harryhausen also planned to make a Baron Munchhausen film early in his career; this test footage is as far as it got. It would have been interesting to compare it to the wonderful Karel Zeman film.

[Gord Green]

I always thought that Joe Haldeman's novel THE FOREVER WAR would make a terrific film.

Keeping away from the over fascist approach that STARSHIP TROOPERS took and focusing on the interpersonal characters in their time dilation spanning journey through an ever changing society would make a fascinating and meaningful movie.

There is plenty of starship and interstellar action as well as drama in the combat training sections of the story.

[Steve Joyce]

Well, I wouldn't be me without mentioning the plans that H.G. Wells and Robert W. Paul had for The Time Machine ... only, oh, 121 years ago!

http://www.victorian-cinema.net/paul
(3rd paragraph)
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"There is a planet in the Solar System where the people are so stupid they didn't catch on for a million years that there was another half to their planet." - Kilgore Trout.

[Andrew Kidd]

I've been trying to think of some other never-made SF films that sounded promising enough to list here. There's also the unmade James Bond film WARHEAD which would have featured robot sharks (but with nuclear bombs instead of laser beams attached to their heads), Terry Gilliam's WATCHMEN (nearly twenty years before the actual film), Tim Burton's adaptation of MAI THE PSYCHIC GIRL (again, long before Hollywood took active interest in anime and manga as source material), Harlan Ellison's MEPHISTO IN ONYX (which was to have starred Samuel L. Jackson), Francis Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS (which sounded like a cross between METROPOLIS and THE FOUNTAINHEAD), BLACK HOLE (based on the graphic novel by Charles Burns), and David Lynch's RONNIE ROCKER and ONE SALIVA BUBBLE (I can't describe them here in a way that would do them justice.

[Krel]

Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, they announced that they were going to film "Have Space Suit - Will Travel". Considering the changes they were going to make, it is a blessing this one died.

The movie was to be about a guy that won a Apollo Moon Suit in a contest, and while wearing it, he gets picked up by Aliens. The movie would have no space stations, Moon cities, space tourism or Earth space travel.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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I was so impressed by the amazing Harryhausen animation in the YouTube video for which Andrew posted a link, I just had to encourage folks to watch it by posting it again (below these two screen shots).

Amazing!





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_ Ray Harryhausen Baron Munchausen test footage


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And while I was doing that, I decided to add test footage videos for other Harryhausen's unmade films.

___ Ray Harryhausen The Elementals test footage


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___ Ray Harryhausen War of The Worlds test footage


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Oh, what the heck! I'll throw in the 90th Birthday tribute to Ray, which cracked me up!

__________ Ray Harryhausen 90th Birthday Tribute


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Great bunch of videos Bud!
Thanks!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.