10 Recently Announced Movies That Will Probably Never Happen

Every single week there are countless new movies announced and "confirmed" by studios, directors, and actors, but let's be honest, how many of them actually end up getting made?

It's safe to say that you shouldn't assume a movie will definitely happen until the cast and crew have been brought to set and cameras are rolling, because there are so, so many things that can prevent a film from coming together.

As such, it's easy to be incredibly skeptical that these 10 recently announced films will ever gain enough traction to get made.

In some cases it's clear that those involved are trying to rustle up support for a project they're struggling to get off the ground, while elsewhere there have been numerous production stumbles, and perhaps it's simply a matter of poor timing, that the target audience for the film has sadly moved on.

Whatever the reason, these 10 films have all been confirmed as in-development, despite the extremely high possibility that they'll remain mired in development hell forever more, if not cancelled outright.

It'd be great to be wrong in many cases, because it's clear that there's plenty of passion and enthusiasm going into these projects...

Buddy cop sequel Lethal Weapon 4 was released all the way back in 1998, and though a fifth film has been whispered about numerous times over the years, nothing substantial has ever really come of it.

Original director Richard Donner began talking up the possibility of Lethal Weapon 5 - tentatively titled "Lethal Finale" - again in 2017, though it wasn't until early 2020 that the sequel was formally confirmed, with Donner and stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover all set to return.

Sadly Donner died this past summer, once again throwing the film's development into disarray, until Gibson announced mere weeks ago that he was in talks to direct the purportedly final entry into the action-comedy franchise.

Gibson explained that Donner had effectively bequeathed the job to Gibson, while the script is being written by Richard Wenk (The Equalizer, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back) for release direct to HBO Max.

While a streaming-exclusive release for the film absolutely makes sense - belated action-comedy sequels have a mostly poor box office rep - given the difficulty the highly controversial Gibson has getting any of his potential projects in front of cameras, it's hard to see it ever happening.

And as great a director as Gibson is, how many truly good 25-years-later comedy sequels can you actually name?

The pull to honour Donner's legacy will be strong, but with Gibson and Glover already at 65 and 75 years of age respectively, the IP is probably better left alone.