8. The Hulk
What Was It: For a long time, the Hulk seemed to be Marvel's only character capable of achieving success in other media. 1978's The Incredible Hulk lasted five seasons and spawned three made-for-TV movies (two of which were intended as backdoor pilots for both Daredevil and Thor). There was even a She-Hulk spin-off in the works. So it's no surprise that in the 90s, Universal looked to restart the franchise in the form of a live-action movie. The development process was a long and sometimes baffling one. John Turman and Michael France were involved in the early 90s, but Universal didn't care for their drafts. Jonathan Hensleigh was later brought on, and his version featured a pre-Hulk Bruce Banner experimenting with gamma-irradiated insect DNA on convicts, which would have turned them into insect men (the above concept art was drawn by Benton Jew). J.J. Abrams also contributed to one of the iterations of the script, but Hensleigh eventually dropped out due to issues with Universal constantly wanting rewrites. Michael France, who was involved in initial drafts in the early 90s, was brought back on. But by that point, people within Universal didn't know what sort of film they wanted to make, as France said he kept getting directions to write it as a sci-fi adventure or as a comedy with Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler in mind. At one point during the development, an issue of Wizard magazine mentioned that Johnny Depp was in talks to play Bruce Banner.
What Happened: More and more rewrites continued, with Michael Tolkin and David Hayter also coming on. It wasn't until Ang Lee signed as director that the final script was written by James Schamus, incorporating many elements of both France and Turman's scripts.