5. Suspension
Another of Whedon's early spec script successes, Suspension netted the writer something like $750,000, with an additional $250,000 if production had commenced back in the day. Which it never did, although there were suggestions as recently as September 2014 that the film might finally be moving forward, with
Liam Neeson rumoured to be starring. The script for Suspension pegged it as a high-concept thriller in the Die Hard mould (admittedly, something which would attract Neeson now that the actor's in his inexplicable mid-life action B-movie phase), about terrorists taking New Yorks George Washington Bridge hostage during a traffic jam, and one man's struggle to stop them. The man in question is a criminal who was on his way back from serving fifteen years in prison for killing a cop, only to find himself teaming with the police. With some real-world grounding and typically smart Whedon character work to balance out the action movie theatrics, this one feels the most like a lost genre classic.