the best movies never made

[Plateosaurus]

Godzia, 100 Milyon Yıl Dev (Godzia, The Hundred Million Year Giant) - One of the many cult mockbuster films to come out of Turkey, this one going after Godzilla and released in 1982. The plot revolves around the old menace of Tokyo, here supposedly a type of placodont as identified by its characters, being awakened by oil drilling and going on a rampage across Turkey and into Istanbul, terrorising the populace with his ear-mounted cobalt rays. The film did get an english release thanks to Roger Corman, under the name Behemoth, renaming the kaiju to the same thing.

Devil - a drama film about a young boy whose parents believe he is the Devil and keep him locked up in their basements, never one acknowledging he's their child, and what happens when a police officer takes him in after arresting his parents.

 

[Duke Andrew of Dank]

Defilement Out of Leeds (2014)
A documentary detailing one of the most prolific sexual criminal rings in world history, which spread across the British Commonwealth until its eventual exposure in the late 1990s. Those interviewed are the victims of Jimmy Savile (UK), John Kricfalusi (Canada), and Rolf Harris (Australia). In addition, the impact it had on international pop culture is exquisitely detailed - one segment being dedicated to "Bad Times on the Border Line" an iconic episode of the American-Japanese series Lupin III: The Western Series. Followed soon after by the details of how the revelations of DiC Entertainment's work environment lead to the whole thing unraveling. As well as how Harvey Weinstein and other American rapists and pedophiles had their crimes exposed though the fall out around the world.

 

[kaijudirector]

Monte Cristo (1994)
An adaptation of Dumas' The Count of Monte-Cristo, but set in colonial Philippines during the Filipino Revolution and after the Philippine-American War. Directed by local director Marilou-Diaz Abaya and starring Cesar Montano, the film was a smash hit at the local box office and won many awards, and has been identified by some as "a patrotic adaptaion for Filipino audiences".

Despite the setting change, it is considered one of the most faithful adapations of the book, down to the characters names in the film being the Filipino variants of their original French counterparts. It also features a cameo by Julio Diaz as historical Filipino revolutionary Macario Sakay (who incidentally, Diaz had played the year before in a biopic based on the revolutionary).

 

[Driftless]

Monte Cristo (1994)
An adaptation of Dumas' The Count of Monte-Cristo, but set in colonial Philippines during the Filipino Revolution and after the Philippine-American War. Directed by local director Marilou-Diaz Abaya and starring Cesar Montano, the film was a smash hit at the local box office and won many awards, and has been identified by some as "a patrotic adaptaion for Filipino audiences". Despite the setting change, it is considered one of the most faithful adapations of the book, down to the characters names in the film being the Filipino variants of their original French counterparts. It also features a cameo by Julio Diaz as historical Filipino revolutionary Macario Sakay (who incidentally, Diaz had played the year before in a biopic based on the revolutionary).

I'll admit I don't know the actors you've mentioned, but the idea of transforming that classic tale of revenge to a completely different time and place should absolutely work.

 

[Some Bloke]

Carry on, Minister (1960)

Starring Sid James as Sir Sidney Knockingham, Barbara Windsor as Gert Smith, Joan Sims as Daisy Jones, Hattie Jacques as Lady Knockingham, Kenneth Williams as Ambassador Jairkov, Charles Hawtree as Comrade Andapantsch, and Kenneth Connor, as "Inspector" Houndsworth.

An unfortunately timed but hilarious in hindsight comedy starring Sid James as Sir Sidney Knockingham, an ambitious but fun loving MP with his eyes on number 10, not to mention most of the secretaries, one of whom is working for the Russians.

Quotes.
"I'm tapping you for Foreign Secretary after the reshuffle, you've always been an upstanding member, and this should be right up your alley". Prime Minister Howard Paige.

"You can say that again." Sir Sidney.

"It should be right up your alley." PM

"Now I know why political scandals are called affairs (dirty laugh)." The Rt Hon Sir Sidney Knockingham, KCB, DSO & Bar, WC & Chain, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Member for Longwood Everard.

A certain political scandal that coincidentally broke out a year later was almost instantly nicknamed "The Great Parliamentary Carry On" by most of the Tabloid press and more than a few Broadsheets as events unfolded.

 

[WhovianHolmesianChap]

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2000)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Screenplay by Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick

Cast:
Hugh Laurie as Arthur Dent

Kelly Macdonald as Trillian

Stephen Fry as Ford Prefect

Richard Wilson as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android

Billy Connolly as Zaphod Beeblebrox

Brian Blessed as Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

Tom Baker as Slartibartfast

Joanna Lumley as Questular Rontok

John Malkovich as Humma Kavula

Bill Oddie as Lunkwill

Tim Brooke-Taylor as Fook

Graeme Garden as the voice of Deep Thought and Eddie the Computer

Stephen Moore as Mr Prosser

Simon Jones as the voice of the Whale

Douglas Adams as the voice of the Guide

 

[unclepatrick]

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2000)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Screenplay by Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick

Cast:
Hugh Laurie as Arthur Dent

Kelly Macdonald as Trillian

Stephen Fry as Ford Prefect

Richard Wilson as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android

Billy Connolly as Zaphod Beeblebrox

Brian Blessed as Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

Tom Baker as Slartibartfast

Graeme Garden as the voice of Eddie the Computer

Joanna Lumley as Questular Rontok

John Malkovich as Humma Kavula

Bill Oddie as Lunkwill

Tim Brooke-Taylor as Fook

Graeme Garden as the voice of Deep Thought

Stephen Moore as Mr Prosser

Simon Jones as the voice of the Whale

Douglas Adams as the voice of the Guide

Great cast .
But I wonder if Brian Blessed could play Zaphod Beeblebrox or if he be too old in 2000 for the character.
I love to see him as Zaphod . He be great .

 

[TheMann]

The Lost Ones Series (2014-2022)
- The Lost Ones: Genesis
- The Lost Ones: Dark Hearts
- The Lost Ones: Ascension
- The Lost Ones: Believe

Across a world of wealth, beauty, strength and vision, a great struggle between rival societies brews underneath, combining the unimaginable powers born from the stars, advanced technologies and dramatic visions of a world beyond what others may deem possible. In the middle of it are two pairs of brothers from vastly different backgrounds but similar strengths and ideals, joining the underground conflicts that threaten to burst out into the world and endanger all involved in them.

Type: Action / Adventure
Nation: Canada / Australia / United States of America
Studio: Northern Lights Studios / Lionsgate Entertainment

Directors: Ang Lee, Nisha Ganatra, Carolina Hawkley
Writers: Cameron Salinas, Benjamin Wallace, Nisha Ganatra
- Based on the novels The Lost Ones and Blademaiden by Cameron Salinas and From The Stars by Stephen Rosswell
Visual Director: Melissa Stephane-Reia
Art Directors: Olivia Wilde, Jeannette Hayes, Dita Von Teese, Melissa Stephane-Reia
Cinematography: Trent Opaloch, Theirry Abrogast

The Lost Ones

Garrett Hedlund as Joshua Lawrence
Max Thieriot as Casey Lawrence
Charlie Hunnam as Anthony Stewart
Aaron Paul as Daniel Stewart

The Blademaiden

Olivia Wilde as Vanessa Woodward
Fan Bingbing as Mei Zhao
Gal Gadot as Lisette "Lisa" Verany
Pom Klementieff as Erica McLaughlin
Michelle Mitchenor as Daniella Chandler
Natalie Dormer as Ariel Cunningham
Bleta 'Bebe' Rexha as Sophia Hamilton
Necar Zadegan as "Lady" Yasaman "Jasmine" Abdelnour
Jennifer Morrison as "Lady" Rachel Pearson
Dita Von Teese as "Goddess" Alice Taylor / Taylor-Stewart
Taylor Swift as Hope Lawrence

The Soul Searchers

John Boyega as Captain Johnathan Spencer
David Paetkau as Anthony Cunningham
Jason Sudeikis as Dr. Daniel Palmer
Sergio di Zio as Dr. Davide Patricelli
Sunny Leone as Leela Shevade
Tina Desai as Sarama Ashtekar
Ron Perlman as Vice-Admiral Edward Stewart

The Evils

Aaliyah Dana Houghton as Sorah Riley-Nkozazana
Paul Giamatti as Minister Anthony Sanford
Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Minister Johnathan Blackhorse
Michael Cram as Inspector Graham Barrett
Michael Weatherly as Dr. Paul Ellington
Bokeem Woodbine as Dr. Karver Robinah

OOC: I'm gonna elaborate more on this as I finish writing it. 🙂

 

[UCB79]

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2000)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Screenplay by Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick

Cast:
Hugh Laurie as Arthur Dent

Kelly Macdonald as Trillian

Stephen Fry as Ford Prefect

Richard Wilson as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android

Billy Connolly as Zaphod Beeblebrox

Brian Blessed as Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

Tom Baker as Slartibartfast

Joanna Lumley as Questular Rontok

John Malkovich as Humma Kavula

Bill Oddie as Lunkwill

Tim Brooke-Taylor as Fook

Graeme Garden as the voice of Deep Thought and Eddie the Computer

Stephen Moore as Mr Prosser

Simon Jones as the voice of the Whale

Douglas Adams as the voice of the Guide

My only gripe with this show- which I otherwise consider excellent- is Hugh Laurie is too abrasive to be
Arthur Dent, who I see as a kind of Everyman. How about another Hugh - Hugh Grant?

 

[NHobson]

My only gripe with this show- which I otherwise consider excellent- is Hugh Laurie is too abrasive to be
Arthur Dent, who I see as a kind of Everyman. How about another Hugh - Hugh Grant?

Not at all. You're too used to seeing Laurie as House. But watch him play Bertie Wooster instead from Jeeves and Wooster.

 

[593jones]

My only gripe with this show- which I otherwise consider excellent- is Hugh Laurie is too abrasive to be
Arthur Dent, who I see as a kind of Everyman. How about another Hugh - Hugh Grant?

That would kill it for me!

 

[UCB79]

Not at all. You're too used to seeing Laurie as House. But watch him play Bertie Wooster instead from Jeeves and Wooster.

Good point NH as I have not seen J&W. I must also confess that Mr Grant is my favorite actor, which I readily
admit makes me prejudiced in his favor over Mr Laurie.

 

[Driftless]

Not at all. You're too used to seeing Laurie as House. But watch him play Bertie Wooster instead from Jeeves and Wooster.

The first time I saw both Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry was as Wooster and Jeeves. As a result, "House" was quite the shock. I didn't get to see the"Blackadders'" till later.

 

[Plateosaurus]

Big Birds - a 2014 nature documentary film released by DisneyNature, and narrated by Danny Trejo. The film is set in miocene South America 15 million years ago and follows the lives of two giant carnivorous birds: the phorusracid Phorusrhacos and the teratorn Argentavis. The individuals followed in the film both start out as chicks, the phorusrhacos is a female named Correnta (from Correteanda, or scamper in spanish), while the Argentavis is a male named Streak. Both are followed as they grow up along their siblings and parents (Correnta's are actually two males raising both chicks together, named Nando and Guji) and try to survive the unforgiving wilderness of time, home to a menagerie of bizarre fauna.

The film received positive reviews from critics, praising its visual effects and scientific research done for it; it has ascore of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the film is more famous for the fact many right-wing outlets and personalities decried having the Phorusrhacos be males, accusing Disney of spreading propaganda. This in turn lead to a total media circus surrounding the debacle.

 

[Duke Andrew of Dank]

Thought I'd add some supplementary material for the fictional history of one of the films I detailed.

IMDB's Trivia Page for Disney's Beauty & The Beast (1971)

• Walt Disney had repeatedly attempted to adapt Beauty & The Beast ever since the success of Snow White & the Seven Dwarves. However, trouble with detailing Belle's stay in the castle halted these attempts. It was only with the critical and commercial underperformance of Hootsie the Owl (1970) that convinced Walt to give adapting the film one final go. [1]
• This was the last Disney film where all of the Nine Old Men contributed to the animation. Wolfgang Reitherman left after animating a few scenes due to various creative differences regarding the studio's future when Walt Disney confirmed that Don Bluth would lead the studio afterwards. Wolfgang eventually joined Warner Bros. animator Phil Roman to lead Fox Animation during the 70s and into the mid-1990s.
• The Beast's design was based on one that Don Bluth had presented for various characters early in the film's development. This early design different in that it was leaner compared to the Beast's more muscular look in its final design. Bluth would work with Les Clark and Ward Kimball to create a version that would add on more animal features mainly from bears, lions, warthogs, and wolves. [2]
• Maurice Chevalier was originally the intended voice of Lumiere, but he had retired already at the time. So the Sherman Brothers proposed Charles Aznavour as a quick replacement.
• Walt's first choice for the role of The Beast was British actor Willie Rushton, whom Walt had met on a trip to the UK to promote Hansel & Gretel (1968). However, Rushton was too busy with his projects in the UK, so Walt decided to give Bobby Driscoll, whom had just returned from rehab at the time, a chance to voice the Beast, but he had trouble making a voice for the Beast that Walt felt was sufficiently guttural. Dean Stockwell also auditioned but also couldn't make the Beast's voice sound guttural enough, which was what led to Harrison Ford being cast in the role instead.
• Connie Smith, who had previously auditioned for the role of Goldie Pheasant in Chanticleer (1968) was Walt's first choice for the voice of Belle - which is why the concept art for Belle that Don Bluth created in 1969 was based on her. However, Smith's thick Southern accent was too difficult for her to stifle, and Walt ultimately settled on having Belle be voiced by BJ Ward instead after a difficult talent search led to her being the best one. Some of Connie's voice work for Belle had already been recorded, and was later used when some of the Sherman Brothers' songs were released on various albums.
• Originally, voice actor Don Messick only was going to voice Cogsworth for a demo tape that'd be used for later auditions by actual English actors, with Spike Milligan being their first choice. However when Milligan stated he was too busy with Warner Bros Animation's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1972), Walt kept this performance because he felt that Messick perfectly captured the character's frumpy and uptight personality.
• In earlier drafts, Belle was generally more amicable and polite from the beginning, with her snarkier comments often being reserved for instances of being pestered by Gaston. However, Walt felt this made her too uninteresting and too similar to previous Disney Princesses. As such, he decided to rewrite her character arc as being one of, as he puts it, "an out-of-touch noblewoman learning the value of commoners as not just people, but also friends". This resulted in her arc of her going from elitist, but otherwise good-hearted to plain good-hearted and more amicable to her social inferiors. Some have suspected that Walt had intended for Belle's initial characterization to be a satire of pro-socialist sentiment in Anglospheric intellectuals of the time, but Walt emphatically denied that the similarities were intentional.
• Originally, Chip Potts would have been voiced by Wolfgang Reitherman's son Bruce, who had voiced Mowgili in The Jungle Book (1966) and Christopher Robin in the earliest Winnie the Pooh featurettes. However the idea was shot down by Reitherman's feud with Walt over the latter's decision to appoint Don Bluth as the head of WDAS after this film, as well as Bruce hitting puberty.

[1] ITTL, The Jungle Book was closer to Bill Peet's vision, which in turn was more faithful to the original Rudyard Kipling books. While the film was generally praised for being Disney's attempt at darker material, it did make a small bit less money than it did IOTL.
[2] Think the head from his 1984 concept art, but with a body closer to his design in OTL's film.
[3] IOTL, this was a song that the Sherman Brothers wrote for a cancelled retelling of Hansel & Gretel. Though that movie was released in TTL's 1968, "Chin Up" was ultimately scrapped, and the Sherman Brothers used it here instead.

OOC: The idea of a Walt-produced BatB was also explored by @HeX in his Laughin' Place TL, and that's what inspired me to do my own spin on an earlier BatB. Additionally, the ideas @NoName allowed me to derive from his animated films TL are somewhat referenced here. The idea of Walt having a son was loosely derived from an idea from @OldNavy1988's TL As Dreamers Do.

 

[NHBL]

I don't have the inclination to write the whole plot, wit actors, reviews, and such, but the saga of the sinking of the Squalus and the rescue afterwards is an epic hat I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't done yet. Tragedy, heroism, and add, "USA! USA!" to taste--perhaps with a foreign observer saying that it is impossible.
Short version here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sailfish_(SS-192)
Being from Seacoast New Hampshire, that's part of local legend.

 

[unclepatrick]

I don't have the inclination to write the whole plot, wit actors, reviews, and such, but the saga of the sinking of the Squalus and the rescue afterwards is an epic hat I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't done yet. Tragedy, heroism, and add, "USA! USA!" to taste--perhaps with a foreign observer saying that it is impossible.
Short version here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sailfish_(SS-192)
Being from Seacoast New Hampshire, that's part of local legend.

There has been a TV movie Submerged in 2001.
It was not very good.
But yes a good movie version or miniseries of the story would be great.

 

[ANARCHY_4_ALL]

There has been a TV movie Submerged in 2001.
It was not very good.
But yes a good movie version or miniseries of the story would be great.

A mini-series would be cool. Under the umbrella of Spielberg and Hanks presents like Band of Brothers and the Pacific. Which lets all be honest we have needed another part to and this fits all too well.

 

[unclepatrick]

A mini-series would be cool. Under the umbrella of Spielberg and Hanks presents like Band of Brothers and the Pacific. Which lets all be honest we have needed another part to and this fits all too well.

My dream projects for a Mini series under Spielberg and Hanks are

Either of these would make a great exciting epic Mini Series .

 

[Hammerbolt]

My dream projects for a Mini series under Spielberg and Hanks are

This. Probably the finest moment of the USN in WWII, imho. Deserves a proper series, not a History Channel horror.