10 Insane Movies That Were Almost Made

7. The Tourist

Men In Black
Columbia Pictures

The Movie: No, not the Johnny Depp one. Filmmaker Clair Noto's The Tourist would've been a sci-fi story following Grace Ripley, an attractive young female professional who is secretly a member of an alien race. Set in modern-day Manhattan, her and her species would be living in hiding, seeking a way to get back to their home world.

Noto wanted The Tourist to have a vivid sexual element, stating that she wanted to make "a science-fiction movie for adults" which portrayed "sexual agony and ecstasy". Quite how that meshes with an alien story is anyone's guess.

Why It Wasn't Made: Noto wanted to make the movie her way - sexy overtones and all - but studio Universal kept pushing back, and the project swiftly entered development hell. At the time, this undercover-alien idea was very original, but the sexualized nature of the story was something that studio execs just couldn't get onboard with.

Remnants of the concept can be seen in flicks like Men In Black (aliens disguised as humans trying to fit into society). Noto did return to the script in the early 2000s, but the idea was just a bit too irreverent (and expensive) for any major studio to take a gamble on.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!