9 Movies That Were Cancelled At The Last Minute

Sometimes, for one reason or another, movies get cancelled. It happens quite a lot in Hollywood, with planned sequels getting scrapped, ideas never turning into something concrete, or a star’s schedule filling up and leaving a planned movie in the lurch.

The ones here are more substantial though. Not just planned movies, but ones where casting, writing and in some cases, even filming had begun before the studio pulled the plug. There’s a variety of factors at play here, and not all of the cancelled movies will make you think of what might have been.

Some though genuinely leave you feeling like you’ve missed out on something, and all of them were a good deal further along than the typical Hollywood boardroom idea pitch.

The X-Men franchise has a particularly storied history of movie cancellations, but seeing as they were recently catalogued here, they’re exempt this time around.

There’s some major directors, studios and stars involved here, showing that nothing is certain in the movie business. No matter who you are, you’re always at risk of a movie being cancelled at the last second.

Newt was a planned Pixar movie, set to be their fourteenth feature, until it was quietly shuffled away and the studio moved on to other things.

Though Disney have made muted comments on it, the movie got as far as casting, concept art and even had a press release announcing it would hit theatres in 2011.

Not too long after though, Pixar confirmed that it would instead be the 2012 release. However, once 2012 rolled around Brave came out instead, and Newt was placed on permanent hiatus. Pixar have been fairly tight lipped on the cancellation, but allegedly the script bore too many similarities to Rio, and thus was deemed no longer viable.

Gary Rydstorm, Pixar’s usual Sound Mixer was set to direct, but the project was then shifted to Pete Doctor, who’d directed Up and Monsters, Inc previously. Doctor though had a pitch for Inside Out too, and everyone at Pixar agreed to push ahead with this instead.

Background Easter eggs for Newt can be found in Toy Story 3 and Brave, showing that it was a serious part of their plans for a while. However, given how well Inside Out did, nobody can really blame them for switching gears.