10 Movie Passion Projects That Will Never Get Made

All the passion in the world didn't help.

By Tom Baker /

Making movies isn't half as easy as it looks. Next time you're ready to totally trash a film, take into account that nobody sets out to make a bad movie €“ it's just that the amount of time, effort, people, and interference both creative and otherwise from forces both inside and outside of a production all factor into it. It's a wonder films ever get finished, let alone that some of them turn out to be pretty good. Of course, for ever masterpiece there are a dozen failures, from the big-budget gamble that didn't pay off to the direct-to-video schlock that didn't have much chance in the first place. But even apart from them, there's a third, separate category: the films that never actually got made. The unrealised projects that didn't quite get off the ground. The streets of Hollywood are littered with them. Most filmmakers will have a few ideas on the go at once, and it's the ones that get greenlit that they go with, and the others are usually cast aside. Usually. Sometimes, though, directors or writers will doggedly pursue that one elusive idea, the one that got away, even if there's no chance of it ever getting made. What did Guillermo del Toro really want to make before he had to settle for Pacific Rim? What could have bee a more fitting swansong fo Orson Welles? And what was the one film Quentin Tarantino didn't get a chance to direct? Here are ten movie passion projects that will never get made...