10 Movies That Were Almost WAY Darker

Holes is arguably a criminally underappreciated adaptation of Louis Sachar's acclaimed novel, centered around a boy, Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf), who is wrongly convicted of theft and sent to a juvenile detention camp in the remote desert to dig holes for 18 months.

Though the script was ultimately written by author Sachar himself, prior to his involvement Richard Kelly, fresh off the success of Donnie Darko, was brought aboard to adapt the novel.

And good god, his version of Holes would've been positively deranged.

Kelly reimagined the source material as a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story taking place in the wake of a nuclear holocaust, where Stanley was sent to the prison camp because he euthanised his radiation-poisoned sister.

The script also includes prostitutes, and the kids weren't forced to dig for buried treasure as in the novel, but nuclear detonators which caused the initial world-ending blast.

After handing his draft in - which can be read here - Kelly was fired from the film, with the producers calling him "insane." Kelly was nevertheless given the opportunity to seek a writing credit, though ultimately chose not to.

As much as this would've been an absolutely disastrous adaptation of Sachar's book, on its own terms it certainly would've been an interesting movie. Never change, Richard Kelly.