Every Cancelled John Carpenter Film We NEVER Got To See

While a Mad Max-style thriller called Pincushion was being shopped around Hollywood in 1989, John Carpenter was tapped to direct.

The post-apocalyptic film follows hardened courier Mary, who must transport a boy who's immune to a disease plaguing humanity. To create a vaccine, Mary needs to take the child cross-country to a medical research centre, while driving through a wasteland populated with savage marauders.

Cher, who had recently won an Oscar for Moonstruck, was cast in the lead, which would have further cemented her transition from musician to full-time actor.

However, concerns were raised when the budget ballooned to $20 million. (Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which was only released two years earlier, only cost half that much.) The fact that Carpenter's last action flick, Big Trouble in Little China, also bombed big time at theatres probably didn't alleviate the studio's hesitancy surrounding the project.

After Cher and Carpenter decided to jump ship, other stars like Demi Moore and Sharon Stone were considered to star as the main character. But here we are 30+ years later, and Pincushion still remains unproduced.