11 Unmade Movie Adapatations That Were Just Weird
9. Michael Jackson's Marvel Movies
It may seem hard to believe right now, but in the nineties, Marvel was struggling. Which is a concise way of saying that they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1996 after the comic book industry faced a downturn. Enter the King Of Pop Michael Jackson, who had a full bank account, dreams of being a movie star, and a crazy vision for Marvel.
Michael Jackson met with Stan Lee in an attempt to buy Marvel with the goal of making movie adaptations that he could star in. In an interview years later, Stan Lee mentioned that the character Jackson was most interested in playing was Spider-Man, and that he and Jackson met several times with the idea of buying the company together.
Lee was unsure if Jackson wanted to produce a Spider-Man movie as well as play the character, but at the end of the day, money talks, and these movies probably would have had a strong creative influence from him.
Not content with his attempt to be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, X-Men screenwriter David Hayter revealed that when the first movie entered production, Jackson lobbied for the role of Professor X, which eventually went to Patrick Stewart.
At the same time, basketball player Shaquille O’Neal wanted to play Bishop (who Hayter hadn't even heard of, and who wouldn't appear until 2014's Days Of Future Past), but there’s only so much craziness to dive into at once.