10 Announced Horror Movies That Will Never Be Released

Even though horror is perhaps the most consistently, reliably lucrative of all film genres, it's not immune to the fact that Hollywood is a cruel business where projects are greenlit and then cancelled on a whim.

Every day countless films are announced that never see the light of day, typically getting mired in development hell for reasons either artistic or business-related - more likely than not the latter.

And horror is no exception - we've heard countless intriguing, exciting, and simply bizarre horror projects be announced in recent years, yet if their current status is any indication at all, this lot is almost certainly never getting made.

The reasons for this are myriad, ranging from changing trends in the industry to countless production delays and even the increasing age of key personnel.

And while it's entirely possible that these films do actually surprise everyone and finally go before cameras, if you're betting money you'd absolutely assume that these things never come to fruition.

From long-awaited horror sequels to ever-gestating passion projects and one of the strangest spin-offs imaginable, these horror films are most likely never going to happen...

Despite its well-noted production woes, World War Z was ultimately broadly well-received by critics and a commercial success, enough that within days of the zombie actioner's release Paramount confirmed that a sequel was in development.

J. A. Bayona (Society of the Snow) was subsequently hired to direct a script from Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), though when this iteration of the project fell through, the studio eventually landed the great David Fincher to helm.

Filming was set to begin in 2018, but pre-production stalled until World War Z 2 was formally cancelled in early 2019, reportedly in large part due to the Chinese government's ban on zombies - a market which was at the time extremely lucrative for Hollywood blockbusters.

It truly seemed like the ship had sailed, then, but back in August David Ellison - the head of the newly merged Paramount Skydance Corporation - stated that a World War Z sequel was once again a priority for the company.

Even with star Brad Pitt's F1 recently blowing up the box office and confirming him to still be a commercial juggernaut, we're closing in on 15 years since the release of the original zombie movie.

That is to say, does anyone really give a damn about World War Z as a property in 2025? 

And considering how loosely the film adapted Max Brooks' source material - that is, barely at all - fans are probably more interested in a flat-out reboot, possibly as a TV show instead, than a direct sequel to the Pitt movie.

Considering Paramount is hard at work developing a bevy of new IP-reinforcing sequels in franchises like Star Trek and Top Gun, it wouldn't surprise anyone if World War Z 2 just gets quietly lost in the shuffle.