Movies stuck in development hell – DigitalSpy.com

Hollywood's a tricky beast, and getting a movie made involves millions of people and bajillions of dollars. Or even pounds, occasionally. But it's still depressing when some of the coolest projects announced just don't seem to quite happen.

Especially when top bods are ploughing money into something like Ben Hur, which we totally could have told them wasn't a very good idea.

There are thousands of movies in development. Right now, there are in fact 28,413 movies listed on IMDb as "in development", and a lot of them are never going to see the light of day.

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But these are the ones we really, really hope might get shuffled to the top of the pile again, simply because they clearly would've been awesome.

20th Century Fox Neill Blomkamp/Instagram

District 9 was exceptional, Chappie was cute and funny, and okay, Elysium wasn't very good. But Blomkamp is a director with flair and edge and his Alien movie just sounded really interesting.

There was talk of Newt and Hicks possibly making a return, Sigourney Weaver was well up for it, and the concept art just blew us away but Alien: Covenant held things up, with Sir Ridley wanting his Prometheus sequel to come out first.

Now Blomkamp says the chances of it getting made at all are slim. Ah well, you never know, these things have a habit of reappearing.

It's ironic that arguably the most literate, grand and movie-like video game of all time has not made it to the big screen, while disposable tosh like House of the Dead and Doom gets farted out with glee by Uwe Boll and their ilk. The reason, as ever, is money and audience.

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Pirates of the Caribbean's Gore Verbinski, who signed on as director and who we reckon would have nailed the atmosphere of the underwater city of Rapture reckoned the project was just eight weeks from shooting before it was canned.

"It was devastating," he told IGN. "Everyone wants to protect their IP it started to smell a little funky. I think at the time there had been some expensive R-rated movies that hadn't worked out."

Based on right-wing pin-up Ayn Rand's weighty tome on the art of selfishness, Atlas Shrugged, BioShock is an unapologetically adult, cerebral take on a supposed utopia that goes very wrong when all restrictions on scientific progress are removed, reducing the population to thieves, murderers and drug addicts, so a PG-13 was never quite going to cut it.

And with the game's developer Irrational closing since, this one may now be swimming with the fishes forever.

Rex Shutterstock

We're a bit torn about this one. Beetlejuice is an absolute classic, one of our favourites of the '80s when Tim Burton was at his peak. It was greenlit in 2016, with a script by Seth Grahame-Smith, and Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton potentially attached. But it's all gone a bit quiet since last year.

Thing is (arguably), Burton hasn't made an actually good live-action movie since Sleepy Hollow, or maybe Sweeney Todd if we're being generous. And the last thing we want is Beetlejuice ruined. So: "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice," (but only if it's good) "Beetlejuice!"

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Movies stuck in development hell - DigitalSpy.com