8 REAL Failed Movie Pitches Just Revealed

2. The Lost Aliens Vs Predator Film

AVP Requiem
Fox

The first Aliens vs Predator film released in 2004, at long last pitting together two of the most successful sci-fi/horror franchises against each other after a long line of comics spin-offs. It was... okay - and the 2007 sequel wasn't exactly anything to write home about either - but what's important is that the first film was in the works for a long time.

The first AVP comic debuted in 1989, about a year before the release of Predator 2, which featured a xenomorph skull in the Predator's trophy cabinet. Development commenced on a movie crossover shortly afterwards, with multiple scripts being submitted before the studios settled on one from Paul W. S. Anderson.

However, while Anderson had been working on his script, John Turman had also started formulating his own pitch for a crossover. It would've been set in the present day, and would've featured US and Russian special forces teaming up to find an energy source stemming from a crashed spaceship, only for them to discover both Predators and Aliens at the crash site. The film would've also ended with the creation of Weyland Industries, effectively explaining their reason for wanting to capture alien life.

This is where things start to get a little awkward though. You see, as Turman explains in his tweet, he pitched this story September 10, 2001 - a day before the September 11 attacks that pre-empted the US invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq, which was also where the bulk of the story was set.

With these events in mind, this pitch didn't stand a chance.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.