12 Shelved Movies That Would've Been INSANE

Background: Inspired by the epic proportions of his 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick set out to make a similarly large-scale biopic of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. During pre-production Kubrick was reported to have created a database of over 17,000 images of Napoleonic-era objects and even enlisted the support of the Romanian army, who agreed to lend him 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 cavalrymen for the film's battle scenes.

Why It Didn't Happen: Despite Kubrick's best efforts, which included writing the entire script and scouting locations, the project failed mainly due to its enormous production costs.

The release of Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk's war epics War and Peace and Waterloo also helped to seal the projects fate. Studio executives felt that his project was too similar to Bondarchuk's existing work and was just too financially risky to greenlight.

Will It Ever Happen? Almost certainly. There has long been speculation that Steven Spielberg was set to realise Kubrick's dream and it was reported in 2016 that HBO will be creating a 6-hour mini-series based on the original script.

The series was reportedly set to be directed by Beasts of No Nation's Cary Joji Fukunaga and executive produced by Spielberg himself. However, with talk about the project falling silent and Fukunaga now signed on to direct Bond 25, it appears that we'll have to wait a little while longer.