9 Upcoming Movie Passion Projects You Aren't Ready For
Who needs blockbusters and sequels?
There's a grand history in Hollywood of actors or directors trying to bring their passion projects to life. Sometimes, we just don't get to see them no matter how great they sound - as with Guillermo Del Toro's At the Mountains Of Madness - and other times, we have to suffer them despite how obviously terrible they looked from the outset. Like John Travolta's Battlefield Earth.
It's inevitable, in an industry driven by egos and creativity that everyone would have an idea of films that NEED to be made. Stories that need to be told can only be told when someone champions them and with blockbusters squeezing the space for original stories and non-franchise movies those champions need to speak a little louder.
Still, there are some very obvious passion projects on the upcoming release slate for the next few years and if the passion behind them can translate into real quality, we might be in for a really great time...
9. Glass
Despite the fact that Unbreakable remains M Night Shyamalan's best film and did reasonably well at the box office, the initial interest in making a sequel ended when Touchstone opted not to finance it. But the director wouldn't be put off and while his profile unfortunately struggled after some less-than-adored releases, he cracked on with his superhero series.
Split - which included a character he'd intended to use in Unbreakable at first - eventually ended up being a success and the stinger set up the third movie. But this wasn't as simple as a director being trusted to finish his planned franchise, because Shyamalan had to barter with Disney for the rights to use David Dunn as a character against a distribution deal on Glass, should it be greenlit.
Glass, then, is the culmination of Shymalan's vision for Unbreakable and Split and will be the point where all of the ideas explored so far come to fruition. And without the director's steadfast belief in his characters it wouldn't have gotten off the ground at all.