10 Craziest Things That Have Been Made Into Movies

9. Trading Cards - Mars Attacks!

Coming from a Tim Burton yet to succumb to cookie-cutter faux-gothic film-making and starring Jack Nicholson and Glenn Close, Mars Attacks! had real potential to be something bonkersly fun. Instead it was as limp and lifeless as the Martians from War Of The Worlds after a weekend stay on Earth; critical reaction was mixed and the box office was a major disappointment. You could attribute some of its failure to coming out less than six months after the similarly themed Independence Day, or the attempt to throw-back to fifties sci-fi B-Movies only making the film look cheap, but the real issue is the source. Mars Attacks (sans exclamation mark) was originally a series of trading cards that graphically depicted an invasion of Earth by Martians (it's a proper Ronseal title). The original run was cut short when parents objected to the content on some of the cards, but the idea became a franchise in the eighties thanks to reprints and comic book tie-ins. Still, quite why after Batman and Ed Wood Burton thought this property should be his next property is strange. The only thing stranger is why Warner Bros. sunk $100 million into a cult franchise that had limited appeal.