10 Cancelled Movies That Would Have Made Billions

9. Leningrad: The 900 Days

Leningrad: The 900 Days pretty much sounds like the greatest epic ever, especially since it was supposed to have been written and directed by the filmic master Sergio Leone (famous for his spaghetti westerns) and was proposed as a vehicle for Robert De Niro, who - at the time when the movie was being shopped around - was renowned as the greatest actor of his generation.

So what would it have been about, exactly? And how would it have grossed a billion?

In short, Leningrad would have been a war epic to end all war epics; the kind of movie you could imagine taking home the statue for Best Picture come Oscar time. De Niro would have played an American photographer caught up in Leningrad as the Germans began to bomb the city, who attempts to survive the siege and protect his new-born son from harm (he falls in love with a Russian woman).

By 1989, Leone had raised $100 million in finances, had convinced composer Ennio Morricone to come on board, and was aiming to begin shooting the picture in 1990. Then he died suddenly, and the potential blockbuster behemoth - which really could have been a movie of Titanic proportions - fell apart at the seams. Thus it found itself sadly cancelled, relegated to the depths of history.