12 Crazy Sequel Pitches That Almost Ruined Great Films

6. Roger Rabbit: The Toon Platoon

Another Spielberg misjudgement based on the commercial success of an original film, and another pitch that wholly missed the point of why the first film was successful. Roger Rabbit was a nailed-on noirish pastiche that happened to use animated characters, but it's follow-up, a prequel initially called The Toon Platoon would have tread completely different waters.

The plot would have a young Roger growing up on a farm before he travels to find his mother, meets his future wife Jessica, joins the army (less than rigorous selection criteria it seems) and is then forced to rescue his bride to be when she is rescued by the Nazis to make pro-Nazi propaganda films. The rescue is completed by a platoon of fellow Toons, naturally, and Bugs returns a hero into the waiting arms of his parents - one of whom turns out to be Bugs Bunny.

It all sounds too silly - though if they had parodied the war film genre the same way they did noir films in the original it might have been something, but something tells me that the studio might not have looked too fondly on a comical presentation of Nazis (the very reason Spielberg left the project.)

Since then the sequel has gone through several reincarnations - and is still rumoured to be on the way - with CGI and mo-cap thrown around at one point, and the war story mercifully thrown out. Here's a snippet of test footage shot back in 1998...