17 Awesome Movie Concepts That Were Totally Botched

10. Sunshine

Sunshine Cillian Murphy
Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Pitch: Danny Boyle directs a sci-fi thriller in which, in the near future, a team of scientists must fire a nuclear weapon into the dying sun in order to reignite it.

What Happened?: It's a killer concept that Danny Boyle did impressive work with on a mere $40 million budget...for the first hour of the movie at least.

After that, Sunshine devolves into a more conventional sci-fi horror flick, disappointingly derailing the prior focus on characterisation and fairly grounded science.

One suspects Fox might've had a say in the film's jarring third act, because there's so much good build-up here, only for it all to crumble apart when it matters most.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.