10 Amazing Horror Movies That Almost Never Got Made
5. Psycho (1960)
It's hard to think that the legendary Alfred Hitchcock would ever have needed to fight to make a movie happen, especially in 1960, having already created all-time classics like North by Northwest, Rear Window, Vertigo, and more. However, the troubled beginnings of Psycho's development show that even those at the top of the mountain don't get a free pass.
Getting Psycho into production was like fighting an uphill battle. According to the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Hitchcock purchased the rights to the 1959 novel and attempted to convince Paramount to green-light a film adaptation. However, they weren't willing to provide a decent enough budget due to concerns about the violent subject matter.
As a result, Hitchcock offered to shoot it quickly and cheaply in black and white, a proposal that was, somehow, also rejected. It was only after Hitchcock offered to finance the movie himself, shooting on a non-Paramount soundstage and posing little risk to them, that the film actually began production.
The rest is history; the movie changed cinema and became one of the director's most famous films, and the executives at Paramount got a taste of humble pie.