11 Unmade Movie Adapatations That Were Just Weird

It may be a sequel rather than an adaptation, but Gladiator 2: Christ Killer absolutely belongs here. And not because it would have brought main character Maximus back from the dead, but because that title is close to being absolutely literal.

In musician Nick Cave’s script, Maximus is resurrected by the Roman pantheon of gods as an immortal, and given the chance to reunite with his wife and child in the afterlife in exchange for one thing: he has to kill Hephaestus, a vocal follower of Jesus, as Jesus’s growing popularity is weakening the strength of the Roman gods, who are portrayed as sickly and diseased.

Ridley Scott believed that script worked very well and tried to work with it, in part because Russell Crowe didn’t want to let the project go, but Crowe’s response was a simple “Don’t like it, mate”. Cave on the other hand claims to have enjoyed writing it immensely because he knew on some level that it would never be made, calling it a “popcorn dropper”.

In keeping with this more out-there approach to the swords and sandals epic, Christ Killer would have ultimately followed Maximus through history, featuring a twenty-minute scene during the Vietnam War, and ending with him in the Pentagon in the present day. Presumably without someone turning up halfway through the credits to recruit him into the Avengers.

What other movie adaptations took a bizarre turn? Let us know in the comments below...