10 Announced Movies That Mysteriously Disappeared

8. Captain Planet

Captain Planet And The Planeteers
Turner Broadcasting

Away from acting, environmental activism is one of Leonardo DiCaprio's biggest passions in life.

He established his own organisation - the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation - dedicated to that cause, he's narrated several nature documentaries, and he even slipped in a climate change "call to arms" during his Oscar victory speech in 2016.

So when it was announced that he was set to produce an adaptation of the Captain Planet cartoon series - centred on a superhero who's dedicated to saving the environment - it seemed like a perfect marriage of artist and material.

Sadly though, the marriage didn't last long. Even though writer Glen Powell discussed the script in a 2018 interview (he called it "dark and irreverent"), that's the last we heard of the project.

Considering DiCaprio's passion for the pro-environment message of this property (as well as the current popularity of superhero movies), it's strange that the project didn't come together. Captain Planet may be able to put out forest fires, but clearly, he cannot escape development hell.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!