8 Movies That Escaped Development Hell (And Weren't Worth The Wait)

Foodfight! is perhaps the most ridiculous movie to be saved from Development Hell and vomited up in front of audiences for a quick bit of cash. Repeatedly ending up on worst movie lists and revelling in its janky animation, the film was supposed to release theatrically in 2003. Instead, it was chucked quickly onto DVD and dropped in 2012, which says everything for its quality.

Foodfight! was largely the result of Mortal Kombat director, Lawrence Kasanoff, beginning production with a good chunk of his budget missing, which is about as bad an idea as it sounds. Assuming him and his production company Threshold Entertainment would get funding from pre-sales and loans, they began animating the movie with computer generated images. And of course, things began to go wrong.

Surprisingly it was actually the unfortunate luck of having the assets for the film stolen in an act dubbed 'industrial espionage' that was the first nail in the coffin, which forced the company to start again in 2002. This time, they went for motion capture, with the animators landing somewhere between the original and the new style in a completely bizarre format that stylised the final movie.

From there, the company's debtors got fed up when Threshold repeatedly missed its deadlines, auctioning the rights off in 2011. It was bought, finalised, then released, and panned universally for being narratively, visually, and developmentally a mess, earning it far more notice than it ever would have got off its own back otherwise.

Still, it does have Charlie Sheen saying "Frankly my dear, I don't give a Spam" on record, so not has been lost.