10 Finished Movies That Disappeared Without A Trace

Maverick director Tony Kaye almost trashed his own career with his feature debut American History X. Disputes with studio New Line over the final cut saw him taking out $100,000 worth of advertising slagging off the studio, before Kaye insisted that he either be given a year to completely remake the movie or be credited under the name "Humpty Dumpty". Things didn't get any easier on his second fiction feature.

A thriller set in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Black Water Transit starred Laurence Fishburne as a fishing executive getting in over his head with Karl Urban's dangerous smuggler. It was, as appears to be the case with everything on this list, a troubled production with a ballooning budget, while original star Samuel L. Jackson had to drop out after a back injury.

A cut of the film was screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, but producer and financier David Bergstein declared it "unreleasable" and withheld payment from Kaye until further post-production was completed.

At the time Bergstein was facing bankruptcy and being sued by a New York hedge fund over financing for his earlier movies. Black Water Transit got caught up in various lawsuits that involved Bergstein's creditors and the movie's co-financers demanding rights to the movie.

In 2018 Bergstein was convicted of defrauding investors in an unrelated case and sentenced to eight years in prison, which he is currently serving. With the rights holder locked up, it doesn't seem like there's much chance of this crime drama escaping to see the light of day any time soon.