“Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as is asserted, flight from a wretched reality, but from the last remaining thought of resistance. The liberation which amusement promises is freedom from thought and from negation.”
— Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (via philosophybits)
For every movie that makes it to the screen, there are countless others that never see the light of day. In Abrams Books’ Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, author Joshua Hull chronicles the ill-fated history of 50 movies that failed to come to fruition. The unique journeys - some were mere pitches, others were developed to varying extents, and a few even entered production - coupled with the reasons why they failed to come to fruition - from creative differences to budgetary concerns - provide a fascinating look at the challenging world of filmmaking.
It’s frustrating that many of these promising projects came so close to reaching viewers (case in point: Guillermo Del Toro’s $150 million adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror opus At the Mountains of Madness starring Tom Cruise), although there are a few that are probably best left unseen. (Did we really need The Lord of the Rings starring The Beatles or A Clockwork Orange starring The Rolling Stones?) Many of the movies were highly publicized in the internet age (like Neill Blomkamp’s Alien legacy sequel), while others are more obscure (such as William Friedkin’s Jack the Ripper with Anthony Hopkins or a David Lynch comedy starring Martin Short and Steve Martin). But in all cases, the “What if?” of it all is fascinating.
