8 HUGE Movies That Were Cancelled Just Before Shooting

Someone, somewhere, is lamenting the fact that there isn't quite enough Star Trek in the world, and it's because of these movies. As legend goes, the very first inception of a Star Trek film came as the brilliantly titled Star Trek: The God Thing, which is a film that would have seen the spacefaring Enterprise crew face off against god himself. Yes, really.

Gene Roddenberry described this initial draft as grappling with the existence of god, and how Vulcan masters perceived the idea of worshipping an all-knowing entity as bizarre. Whilst this draft didn't make it past studio officials for fear of getting a little too controversial by making Passion of the Christ with tasers, it was then restructured as Planet of the Titans - which would have seen Captain Kirk discover a lost plant where the titans of Ancient Greek mythology were chilling out.

Even though this did far better and got to a point where it would actually start filming in 1977, Paramount president Barry Diller decided to scrap the $10 million budget after learning of another sci-fi films release at the same time, since audiences wouldn't want to see two big science fiction movies in the same year. They instead waiting until 1979 to release Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The competition that stopped the movie originally though? Star Wars. How poetic.