10 Greatest Movies Never Made

4. Heart Of Darkness

Originally, this was going to be Orson Welles' directorial debut. RKO Pictures gave Welles complete artistic control over the film and being an aspiring and ambitious 24 year-old movie maker, he grabbed the opportunity to adapt Joseph Conrad's novel with both hands.

Welles' ambition has never been in doubt, but on Heart of Darkness, it became his downfall. The film was in pre-production in the late 1930s, so the Nazi rule of Germany and the impending war was obviously a big news topic, and in turn, Welles turned Conrad's famous novella into a fierce allegorical attack on fascism, which frightened the studio as they wished to remain apolitical.

It was unheard of for an untried movie director to be given final cut, yet RKO gave it to Welles - they just could not agree on the direction in which the adaptation should go. Welles' ideas for the piece were highly experimental and would take the picture grossly over-budget. Inevitably, RKO pulled the plug completely and told Welles to look for other projects as he still had a two picture deal with the studio to complete.

After the studio were uninterested in a project entitled The Smiler with a Knife, Welles began work on what would become Citizen Kane, so perhaps it was for the best Heart of Darkness never got made. Francis Ford Coppola's unbeatable epic, Apocalypse Now is a loose adaptation of the novella anyway.