10 Films That Were Stuck In Development Hell For Years

2001's Jurassic Park III wasn't the most warmly-received film in the franchise in terms of critical appraisal, but it still performed brilliantly at the box office and paved the way for a fourth film, which was set to begin production just a few years later, in 2004. The film was planned to have a 2005 release, with Steven Spielberg coming up with an idea for the film and hiring William Monahan to pen the script.

Veteran actors Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough were set to reprise their roles, but the project soon tumbled into development hell. Several writers came in with script ideas, but Spielberg wasn't entirely satisfied with any of them. The 2007-08 writers strike delayed production further, and the death of Michael Crichton, the author of the original Jurassic Park novels, made the producers have a few second thoughts about the project in general.

The film then went on hold for a few years, with Spielberg taking time to focus on Lincoln while the search for a good script continued. Finally, thanks to a story developed by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, Jurassic World entered pre-production in 2013. A few more rewrites had to happen, but the production went pretty smoothly and the movie came out in 2015.