Almost Famous - 10 films not coming to a cinema near you

1. Quentin Tarantino’s Vega Brothers

Ever since the success of Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino has openly discussed his idea for a sequel/prequel to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The Vega Brothers would have united the characters played by Michael Madsen and John Travolta in both films (although the characters were never linked as brothers in the story, they both had the same last name).
Why not: Tarantino keeps mentioning the project every once in a while, only to put it on the back burner when something more interesting comes up.

2.Tom Cruise’s Phil Spector biopic

Long before Phil Spector went on trial for murder, Tom Cruise began developing a biopic of the legendary music producer and shepherded in artists ranging from the Ronettes to Ike and Tina Turner. Cruise recruited Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe but their script stumbled when they couldn’t work out an ending.
Why not: Spector’s life, including his recent acquittal, is more likely to be the subject of a TV movie than a big screen production.

3. A Confederacy of Dunces

Probably no single project in Hollywood history has been attempted as many times, by as many people. For 26 years, directors, actors and producers have tried to produce a cinematic version of John Kennedy Toole’s hilarious Pulitzer prize-winning novel, attracting the likes of John Belushi, Chris Farley and Will Ferrell.
Why not: Will Ferrell has said it’s the movie everyone wants to make, but no one wants to finance.

4. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes’ literary classic is the curse of every director that tries to bring it to life. Orson Welles tried it, and failed. Terry Gilliam’s attempt spawned Lost in La Mancha; an entertaining if somewhat tragic documentary charting the disasters that plagued production.
Why not: Terry Gilliam is no stranger to failure and the £32 million project was beset by all manner of calamity until the director was forced to abort.

5. Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis

Probably THE most famous unproduced movie ever. Coppola had been trying to make Megalopolis for decades; an ambitious epic about the battles between art and commerce, history and the future, told through the architectural restructuring of New York City.
Why not: Considered too ambitious, too expensive, and perhaps just too much for the aging Coppola. They did shoot some scenes in New York, but were put on hold after 9/11. Then the film’s distributor went bust.

6. Alfred Hitchcock’s Kaleidoscope

In the mid-1960s, with his career at a low ebb following the critical failure of Marnie and a mixed response to Torn Curtain, Hitchcock proposed an experimental film shot from a serial rapist and killer’s point of view that might well have presented a radical change in style and new phase of cinematic creativity.
Why not: This could have been Hitchcock’s darkest movie but was too ugly and dark for its time, and studio brass turned it down.

7. Orson Welles’s Batman

The mind boggles what Orson Welles’s planned movie of Batman might have been like. Scheduled for release in the late 40s, Welles’s wanted to make a dark, serious psycho-drama at a time when comic books were in their infancy.
Why not: The project is said to have broken down due to the fact that Welles wished to cast himself as Batman and Bruce Wayne, while the studio wanted a more traditional leading man for the role, Gregory Peck.

8. Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon

Following the critical and box-office success of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick thought he could now make any film he wanted. His proposed biopic of Napoleon’s life was to be a chaotic, sex-drenched, war-soaked epic.
Why not: Kubrick died in March 1999 during post-production of his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, leaving behind several unfinished projects including Napoleon, A.I. (later finished by Steven Spielberg) and a Holocaust project titled Aryan Papers.

9. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit

Film fans have been waiting years for Jackson’s adaptation of hobbit hero Bilbo Baggins’ adventures in the Misty Mountains. It would have seen Ian McKellen star again as Gandalf in Tolkein’s perennial children’s favourite.
Why not: The film rights are split between MGM and New Line Cinema who Jackson sued over his share of profits from the Lord of the Rings films.

10. Orson’s Welles’s Heart of Darkness

Orson Welles’s first movie was to be an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but it collapsed even before the cameras got rolling and the film remained stillborn.
Why not: It came down to the fundamental issue of control: “I wanted my kind of control. They didn’t understand that,” said Welles. “There was no quarrelling. It was just two different points of view, absolutely opposite each other. Mine was taken to be ignorance, and I read their position as established dumbheadedness.”