6. The Tourist (No, not that one)
Long before Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie took that film title and offered up jet another high-velocity splattering from Hollywood's turd cannon with 2010's desperate swipe at a charming Hitchcockian thriller that ultimately had jaws on the floor for all the wrong reasons, a little science fiction script called "The Tourist" was landing in the laps of producers across the land. Penned by Claire Noto, the script followed Grace Ripley, a beautiful lawyer who also happened to be an alien disguised as a human and trapped on Earth as she found herself dragged into a murky underworld comprised of other extra-terrestrials like her stuck in Manhattan. In short, it was a considerably darker version of Men in Black that came fully loaded with elegant tentacle sex sequences and concept art by H.R motherfudding Giger. Come on, what's not to love? The first attempt at getting it made began at Universal in 1980, but a volatile combination of personality clashes and creative differences sunk the project before it could ever get going. Noto's now legendary script was sexy, bizarre and unapologetically strange in the way it was structured, a difficult sell for big wig studio execs at the time. Eventually thanks to a unique clause in her contract, Noto was able to shunt the picture across to a different studio. That studio happened to be Frances Ford Coppola's newly formed Zoetrope. However, knock on effect financial difficulties from Coppola's enormo-mega-musical flop "One from the Heart" (although it is the place Tom Waits got his mojo back, so we can't be too upset about that movie) meant that the filmed stalled once again. Universal bought back the rights and it's never gone forward from there. What's so tantalizing about the project though is clear in what little evidence of it remains. Noto's script can be freely downloaded and the aforementioned strange, frightening concept art by H.R Giger that exists is really something to behold.