Top 10 Unproduced Screenplays

For every screenplay that becomes a feature film, there are far more that are never produced. Many scripts, even scripts that have sold for a lot of money and had A-list talent attached, find themselves in “development hell” or “turnaround” (i.e. the studio that bought the script decides not to produce it and offers the rights for a price). 

Some of these unproduced scripts have become things of legend in the film business and over the decades, several of the more legendary unproduced scripts have found their way onto the internet. An unproduced screenplay, especially one from a major talent or connected to a popular franchise, can stir as much debate among screenwriters and film buffs as a produced feature. Should this script have been produced? What would the film have been like?

The Top 10 Unproduced Screenplays below are still discussed today in web articles, YouTube videos and message boards, and manage to stir the imagination even without ever getting made into a movie.   

After the campy and derided Batman & Robin, Warner Brothers knew the franchise needed to go in a different direction. Darren Aronofsky, a young independent filmmaker at the time, was enlisted to direct and Frank Miller, the comic book writer responsible for the classic graphic novels The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, was hired to write the script (with Aronofsky’s collaboration).

Although the script would likewise be a Batman origin story and included many elements of the graphic novel and its gritty and dark tone, it was even darker and more violent and contained big changes to the Batman character and mythos (e.g. Alfred is reimagined as a mechanic that takes in Bruce, who went missing after his parents’ murder). Ultimately, Warner Brothers thought the Batman: Year One script was too dark and too much of a departure and they passed on it. 

Over the years, the script has received mixed reviews, but it was clearly ahead of the curve. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy likewise took influence from Miller’s graphic novels, and the overall tone and direction of Batman: Year One foreshadowed Todd Phillips’ Joker (even down to its 1970s cinema influence) and Matt Reeves and Lauren LeFranc’s The Batman and The Penguin series.

Often cited by film scholars as “the greatest film never made”, Stanley Kubrick’s ambitious Napoleon biopic has indeed garnered a legendary and mythic status. Coming off 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick envisioned Napoleon as his next big, cinematic statement.

For months Kubrick did extensive research and created notes and a historical timeline he planned to follow. In addition he created storyboards and a rough draft of the script. Ultimately the project was deemed too costly, and Kubrick abandoned it (although some of his planned filming techniques and meticulous recreation of a past time period was finally realized with his film Barry Lyndon).

Eventually, the script and many of Kubrick’s production notes and storyboards were made available to the public. The script is said to be workmanlike and essentially an expanded outline: a director sketching out his grand vision. No doubt, if the project had moved forward, Kubrick would’ve worked on the script further and maybe even have brought on a screenwriter to help him flesh it out.

An even more ambitious unrealized project is avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. In the mid 1970s, Jodorowsky was the first director to take a stab at adapting the sci-novel and he had envisioned the film as a 3 hour, psychedelic, sci-fi epic. A French production, Jodorowsky had developed the project for 2 years, enlisting the visionary artists Mœbius and H.R. Giger to help design the characters and world. 

Jodorowsky’s screenplay went through many drafts, all of them said to be quite long, and the storyboards being created were like nothing ever visualized yet on film. In addition, Jodorowsky was putting together an idiosyncratic cast, including Mick Jagger, Orson Welles and Salvador Dali. At one point Pink Floyd was being considered to do the soundtrack. Big ideas led to even bigger ideas and the project kept growing and growing: as did the screenplay.  

After 2 years, Jodorowsky had spent 2 million dollars of the 9.5 million budget on pre-production. When looking to raise more money for the project in Hollywood, the storyboards and screenplay were circulated to various studios and production companies. Between the expense of the proposed film, the limited technology at the time and a screenplay that would’ve resulted in a 14-hour-long movie, Jodorowsky’s appeal to Hollywood ended up tanking the project. In 1976, Dino De Laurentiis acquired the rights to the book and would spend many years developing another Dune (and would ultimately lead to the 1984 David Lynch film).       

Dan O’Bannon, who was in charge of special effects for Jodorowsky’s Dune, would be instrumental in getting H.R. Giger to design the original Alien (1979). Although leaked drafts of Jodorowsky’s script have received mixed reviews (largely due to its departure from the source material), its impact is undeniable.

The storyboards alone show the influence this unproduced film had on subsequently produced sci-fi classics: Star Wars, Alien and Blade Runner.   

An entirely different story and screenplay from the Alien 3 that would later be produced, this original version of the sequel promotes Corporal Hicks as the protagonist (Ripley only having a small role) and, alongside the android Bishop, Hicks has to put a stop to a new Xenophobe infestation on a space station/shopping mall hybrid. The story was created by writer-producers David Giler and Walter Hill, who imagined it as being the first in a 2-film arc (Ripley’s character was supposedly returning for a larger role in the fourth installment for a big finale that showed humanity working together to stop the Xenophobes from destroying their race).    

Giler and Hill enlisted cyberpunk author William Gibson to write the script, which has become a fan-favorite on the internet. Many Aliens fans who were disappointed with the — SPOILER ALERT — the killing off of Hicks, Bishop and Newt at the start of Alien 3, found this story far more satisfying and felt it opened-up the franchise rather than forcing it into a corner and being solely Ripley-dependent. The script is also very action-packed and entertaining, combining the horror elements of the original Alien with the action-adventure of Aliens. However, the producers were unsatisfied with the script and decided to start from scratch and after a handful of different scripts, Ripley would once again become the focal character. 

Over the years, Gibson’s Alien III has amassed such fandom, it was adapted into a comic book, a novel and even an audio drama with the actors Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen reprising their roles.  

Once again, an entirely different story and screenplay from the sequel that would later be produced (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers). This first attempt at resurrecting Michael Myers was conceived and overseen by the franchise’s original writers, John Carpenter and Debra Hill, and written by Dennis Etchison (who had written the novelizations for Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch).   

A compromise between producer Moustapha Akkad’s desire to bring Michael Myers back to the series after his absence from the stand-alone third entry and Carpenter and Hill’s desire to not repeat themselves, the script is a post-modern examination on the power of fear and how attempting to suppress it can only make things worse. After Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis — SPOILER ALERT — died in the explosion at the end of Halloween II, the residents of Haddonfield banned Halloween. The protagonists are Tommy and Lindsey (the children from the first film and now teenagers) as they deal with the town’s anti-Halloween mandate and the emergence of a spectre Michael Myers (a supernatural being brought into existence via the town’s collective repression).      

Akkad rejected the script and demanded a flesh-and-blood Michael Myers and a return to the original formula. Not interested in doing so, Carpenter and Hill bowed out and Akkad hired new writers to write a new screenplay. A definite case of being ahead of its time, Etchison’s Halloween IV foreshadows such meta takes on the horror genre as Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Scream and some of its ideas were explored in the latest Halloween entry, Halloween Ends (Haddonfield’s collective trauma and repression being a plot point).    

What’s even more meta than the above script is this one here (possibly the most meta piece of art ever created): The Tony Clifton Story written by comedy legend Andy Kaufman and his creative collaborator Bob Zmuda. Anyone who’s a fan of Kaufman or has at very least seen the biopic Man in the Moon, knows that Tony Clifton is the obnoxious lounge singer character alternately played by Kaufman and Zmuda and who they insisted was a real person.

The Tony Clifton Story is an absurdist biopic in which Andy Kaufman himself is a character in the script and the story is how he hires Tony Clifton as an opening act (he’s presented as a real and separate person in the script). Kaufman doesn’t do this because he thinks Clifton is talented, but because he’s counting on audiences hating him. As he sometimes did in his public appearances, Kaufman portrays himself as a “Hollywood type” with a contempt for the public and exposing them to Clifton is his way of messing with them. With meta joke upon meta joke, this script is as genius as it is funny and it has rightfully developed a cult following.       

However, back in 1980, it met with bafflement from producers and studio execs (Kaufman’s film Heartbeats flopping didn’t help either). Another case of being ahead of its time, The Tony Clifton Story and its meta humor would decades later find a place in the mainstream with content like Curb Your Enthusiasm and the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman (e.g. Being John Malkovich, Adaptation).

Another absurdist, meta comedy that has developed a cult following, Sprockets was going to be the film version of the popular SNL sketch. As in the skits, Mike Myers was set to play the artsy German stereotype Dieter, who’s disinterested in everything but his sidekick monkey Klaus. In the script, Dieter travels to Los Angeles in order to rescue Klaus after he’s been kidnapped. The primary suspect for the monkey theft is Baywatch star David Hasselhoff (who is Dieter’s chief rival for ratings in Germany).

After the success of the first two Austin Powers films, Sprockets was a “go picture” at Universal when Myers pulled the plug on it due to dissatisfaction with his own co-written script. This caused quite an industry stir at the time and Universal sued Myers for 3.8 million in pre-production costs. The script was leaked onto the internet and over the years, many have praised it for its dark and absurd humor.      

The Sprockets script also influenced me to write the script that broke me into the industry, Pierre Pierre (itself a noted unproduced screenplay, which had Jim Carrey attached to play an artsy French stereotype). In addition, Sprockets isn’t dissimilar to the smash comedy hit Borat (foreign guy travels to America to track down a Baywatch star). In retrospect, Sprockets probably would’ve served Myers better than The Cat in the Hat and The Love Guru.

Atuk is considered a “cursed script” in Hollywood because four actors attached to play the title character died after accepting or expressing interest in the role: John Belushi, Sam Kinison, John Candy, and Chris Farley.

Based on The Incomparable Atuk by Canadian author Mordecai Richler, the project began development in 1971 when director Norman Jewison acquired the rights to the novel and enlisted National Lampoon writer Tod Carrol to write the satirical “fish out of water” script. Atuk tells the story of a Canadian Inuit poet who relocates to Toronto and becomes corrupted by the militaristic urban culture. 

John Belushi was the first actor attached to the script and was set to play Atuk when months later, he died of a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont. A couple years later, Sam Kinison signed on for the part and even went as far as to rewrite the script. However, after being killed in a car crash, Kinison became the second Atuk to die. This pattern would repeat itself in the 1990s when John Candy and Chris Farley expressed an interest in the role and both met with untimely deaths (Candy via a heart attack, Farley an overdose). 

Although screenwriter Tod Carroll has dismissed the notion of a curse, it’s not hard to imagine why people would think such a thing. Is the Atuk script cursed or are all these deaths merely a coincidence?

A legendary unproduced screenplay that was going to serve as a horror sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and would become the genesis of several Steven Spielberg projects, including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

In the late 1970s, after the success of Close Encounters, Columbia studio wanted a sequel. Fearing they would just go ahead and make one without his involvement (as Universal did with Jaws), Spielberg pitched a quasi-sequel also involving extra-terrestrials, but being a full-out horror film this time around. Inspired by the Kelly–Hopkinsville UFO incident of the 1950s, Spielberg enlisted Piranha screenwriter John Sayles to write the script and Rick Baker to design and construct the aliens. The story centers on a Kentucky family, who one night are terrorized by a group of malicious aliens (referred to as E.T.’s in the script) at their isolated farmhouse. 

After showing the script to screenwriter Melissa Mathison, who responded to a subplot involving the lone friendly E.T. befriending the youngest member of the human family, Spielberg decided to rethink the project and he hired Mathison to write a new script with a more family-friendly and uplifting tone. This would become E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

However, many elements of Night Skies would appear in other Spielberg produced films of the 1980s, most notably Poltergeist and Gremlins. E.T. itself had a darker and more horror-leaning treatment for a sequel entitled E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears, but this never reached the script stage. This treatment and the first draft of Night Skies are both available online and they point to a darker direction from Spielberg that he has occasionally hinted at yet never fully indulged.

It’s fitting that the unproduced screenplay to top this list should be from none other than the most successful screenwriter in history: Joe Eszterhas. In addition to selling a handful of spec scripts for millions of dollars (e.g. Basic Instinct, Jade) and writing several films in the 1980s and 1990s, Eszterhas also wrote his share of scripts that were never produced, the most notorious being Sacred Cows. 

A departure from the erotic thrillers Eszterhas is known for, Sacred Cows is a political satire about a fictional U.S. Presidential race in which the incumbent candidate is photographed in a compromising position with — brace yourself — a cow. Yes, you read that correctly and here’s the punchline: Eszterhas sold it to MGM for 2 million dollars. 2 mil for a script about a U.S. President that has sexual relations with a cow. This is one of the many reasons Eszterhas is a legend. It’s also a testament to the power of “heat” in the film industry. The script was written after his big spec sale for Basic Instinct, which no doubt added to the purchasing price. Also, several A-list directors flirted with the project throughout the 1990s, including Steven Spielberg.

Eventually, despite the initial excitement created by the script, everyone came to their senses and a film was never produced. Perhaps unfortunately so because such an audacious political satire would likely have been an entertaining film and perhaps even a prophetic one with the role controversy plays in today’s political landscape. No doubt, it would’ve been a movie people talked about. 

Then again, maybe Sacred Cows was destined, like all of the screenplays on this list, to make the myths without ever being produced. All of these scripts beg the question, “What if?” and allow us to envision the movies the screenwriters were dreaming of when writing.

Ultimately that’s what a screenplay is: a dream of a movie.