7 Abandoned Movie Crossovers (And Why They Fell Apart)

The Crossover: While not a crossover in the traditional sense - "traditional" meaning shared characters or plot points - there was a point in time when Jaws 3 was going to be a comedy/spoof film, crossing over with the incredibly goofy tone found in National Lampoon's Animal House.

After 1980's Airplane! proved that spoof movies could be both good and commercially successful, Jaws producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck contacted Matty Simmons, producer of Animal House, with a proposal: a full-on Jaws spoof movie. From there, John Hughes and Tod Carroll were hired to write the script, and Joe Dante - fresh off schlocky horror movie Piranha - was considered as the director.

The movie was called Jaws 3, People 0, and would have centred around the production of a third Jaws film. Throughout the film, the shark would keep attacking the director, and in one scene, would have bitten off his toe and his foot. It would also have featured Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss and Jaws novelist Peter Benchley, because why not go all the way and make it as self-referential and ridiculous as possible?

Why It Fell Apart: In an interview with IGN, Simmons explained that none other than Steven Spielberg was responsible for shutting this one down, despite Universal having already sunk $2.5 million into pre-production:

"The studio had already spent $2.5 million on pre-production... it starred Richard Dreyfuss and a young woman named Bo Derek, who would have been fabulous, and Spielberg walked into [Universal chairman Sid] Sheinberg's office and said 'you make this movie and I'm walking off the lot,' because what happened is it made fun of the director."

Spielberg could have been in the film if he wanted to play ball, but it's clear he was unhappy about the way the script made an absolute mockery of his own original Jaws movie. Universal would push ahead with Jaws 3-D instead, and the less said about that, the better.