What if Sam Peckinpah got to make a superhero movie? What might David Lynch'sReturn of the Jedi have looked like? Hollywood is a mysterious land filled with tantalizing combinations of talent and subject that could've produced either classic pieces of genre entertainment—or disasters of gargantuan proportions.
Dune, by Ridley Scott
After director Alejandro Jodorowsky's ambitious attempt to adapt Dune (with Salvador Dali as the Emperor!) fell apart, producer Dino De Laurentiis turned to Alien's Scott—who planned on splitting Frank Herbert's massive story into two films. But he bailed once it looked like Dune would swallow upmore of his life than he was willing to give it:
"After seven months I dropped out of Dune; by then Rudy Wurlitzer had come up with a first-draft script which I felt was a decent distillation of Frank Herbert's. But I also realised Dune was going to take a lot more work—at least two and a half years' worth. And I didn't have the heart to attack that because my older brother Frank unexpectedly died of cancer while I was prepping the De Laurentiis picture. Frankly, that freaked me out. So I went to Dino and told him the Dune script was his."
Superman, by Sam Peckinpah
The Wild Bunch director, who still had a bit of heat thanks to 1972's Steve McQueen hit The Getaway, met with producer Ilya Salkind in late 1974 to discuss his potentially directing a Superman film. (At the time, Salkind was talking with actors like Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino and Muhammad Ali for the role of Clark Kent/Superman.) As the story goes, when Peckinpah pulled a gun during the meeting, his chance at directing Superman was shot.
Total Recall, by David Cronenberg
Before Paul Verhoeven sent Arnold Schwarzenegger's ass to Mars, Cronenberg was hired by then-producer Dino De Laurentiis to adapt Philip K. Dick's interstellar adventure. As Cronenberg toldWired:
"I worked on it for a year and did about 12 drafts. ... Eventually we got to a point where [producer] Ron Shusett said, 'You know what you've done? You've done the Philip K. Dick version.' I said, 'Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?' He said, 'No, no, we want to do Raiders of the Lost Ark Go to Mars.'"
Frustrated, Cronenberg left the project and went on to make another film that dealt with the shifting nature of identity: The Fly.
The Incal, by Pascal Blais
Back in the '80s, animator Pascal Blais desperately wanted to make an animated film based on writer Alejandro Jodorowsky and artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud's epic sci-fi comic. Blais even went so far to animate this trailer which, while a little rough, is still a tantalizing look at what might've been.
Doctor Strange, by Guillermo del Toro and Neil Gaiman
Marvel's sorcerer supreme has been the target of filmmakers as diverse as Francis Ford Coppola (who dug the character back in the '70s) and Wes Craven (who was attached to direct an adaptation back in 1992). But when Paramount got the rights in 2005 and signed del Toro in 2008. And theHellboy director had some very definite ideas about Dr. Stephen Strange. As he told Empire:
"I talked with Neil Gaiman [about writing it]. ... I said, that's an interesting character because you can definitely make him more in the pulpy occult detective/magician mould and formula than was done in the Weird Tales, for example...the idea of a character that really dabbles in the occult in a way that's not X-Filey, where the supernatural is taken for granted. ... But I wouldn't use the suit!"
Return of the Jedi, by David Lynch
Based on liking Eraserhead, Lucas offered the task of directing Return of the Jedi to Lynch—who was also weighing the opportunity to shoot Dune for Dino De Laurentiis. Knowing that Star Wars is Lucas' baby through and through, and that he wouldn't have the freedom to make Jedi his own, Lynch passed. If you wanna hear about Lucas and Lynch's first meeting, and the migrane Lynch experienced when Lucas began describing Wookiees, just bounce over here and watch.
Buckaroo Banzai vs the World Crime League, by WD Richter
In the closing credits of 1984's The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, there's a little slug that touts a sequel, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. That sequel never happened—probably because Banzai grossed a mere $6.2 million domestically. As Richter said recently:
"Technically, we have not violated our promise to the audience. We try to keep the franchise and the brand alive, anyway, because we never know when somebody is going to say, 'Yeah, make something else.'"
Fox did toy with a TV show with the deadly title Buckaroo Banzai: Ancient Secrets and New Mysteries, but nothing very materialized beyond this CG action sequence:
Solaris, by James Cameron
Cameron had long been a fan of the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky film, a landmark in psychological, existential sci-fi filmmaking, and secured the rights for a remake. He'd eventually hand the project to Steven Soderbergh—while staying on as a producer—who roped in his Ocean's Eleven star George Clooney.
Casino Royale, by Quentin Tarantino
The Pulp Fiction auteur claims to be a massive fan of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel—so much so that he was, at one point, actively campaigning to adapt it with Pierce Brosnan as his 007. But when Brosnan left the franchise, Tarantino let his passion dim ... leaving the Bond masterminds to take a run at Royale with a different Bond (Daniel Craig) and a different director (Martin Campbell). Not that QT is bitter ...
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