MovieChat Forums > Batgirl Discussion > When was the last time a nearly finished...

When was the last time a nearly finished movie was cancelled?


I can't recall the last time this happened.

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The Exorcist prequel. but got reshot with Renny Harlin as director. eventually the original version was released

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Maybe Renny Harlin should have reshot The Good Life (1997) since he previously directed Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger.

Instead of suing the producers of The Good Life, Sly could have purchased the rights to it and control how it was marketed so that his brother Frank got a fair shot of being a star.

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1994’s Fantastic Four was never officially released, but pirated copies remain. I guess you can expect the eventual same fate for Batgirl. So never fear!

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I fully expect to see bootleg copies circulating at some point.

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That movie was never meant to be released - it was a ploy to keep the rights (even the actors were unaware oh this at the time).

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Tell me more!

I know that's why so many crap versions of "Fantastic Four" were released, but how does shooting a film and never releasing it fulfill the conditions of the contract? And why spend an alleged $90 mil on it, when they could have spent a million or less to the same end? I mean $90 mil is a low budget by the standards of comic book movies, but it's a lot to throw away.

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There is a documentary called Doomed on the making of the 1994 Fantastic Four movie. It was being done by Roger Corman ( I can t remember for sure, but I seem to recall even he didn t know it was a scam). Years ago I got the bootleg off of Ebay and it is horrible. The special effects are really bad.

All the lead actors had no idea it was only a ploy to keep the rights to the FF.

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$90 mil probly wasnt low budget in '94 was it?

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No, it wasn't. You're correct there.

I've just heard this "Batgirl" movie referred to as a $90 mil movie, and that's a low budget compared to a big Marvel film. And of course if the whole thing was a scam intended to keep the rights to a property, there's no way that $90 mil figure is real.

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The 1994 movie budget was estimated 1 million, nowadays a bargin, back then still okish low budget.

Just for comparison: Batman Returns budget was 80 Million USD and this was a tent-pole movie for Warner back then.

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The contracts with Marvel said, that a production with the hero universe had to be in some kind of active and credible production every x years, I think it was 10. Fantastic Four was owned by the german movie company Constantin Film. They are not as tricky and professional as american movie companies and so they prefered to give Roger Corman a super low budget and make an actual movie instead of having something in development hell and risk losing the license. This guaranteed them then the 2005 and 2007 movie and a nice paycheck for selling the rights to 20th Century Fox eventually. So for them it was definitely worth it.
Similar situation was for e.g. Daredevil. Elekra was released 2005, so they needed to start producing in 2015. But this franchise was such a stinker for them (personally still partly shell shocked by Elekra) that they prefer to give the rights back to Marvel, who then sold the 5y license to Netflix.

Btw: Fantastic Four 2005 and 2007 earned together world wide 600 million USD, nearly 300 million USD domestic. With a budget of together roughly 200 million USD, these movies might be considered not good (imo still good guilty pleasures), but they definitely earned enough. 2015 was a loss, but at least not a total one. Batgirl with similar projections, but a less attractive title hero would be a bigger catastrophe.

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The Day the Clown Cried. Jerry Lewis never allowed it to be released.

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It will be released in 2024.

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The producers never paid the author of the book for the rights for the film. The film was almost finished when the author took legal action and production was stopped. Jerry decided to finish it with his own money on the assumption that the issues would be resolved. However, he didn't have access to the studio resources. Afterwards he decided he didn't like the finished project (picture quality/bad editing/errors/ et. al.) so packed it up without trying to resume negotiations.

He donated it to the library of Congress on condition it is not released for public viewing until 2025, probably to assure he was dead. As I understand, it cannot be theatrically released nor put on physical media or digital release. I imagine there will still be some issues since to date I believe the author has never been paid.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreleased_American_films

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To add to that list is Robodog: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3501062

It began pre-production in 2013, the vocals were recorded in 2014, it was going to be released in 2015...then nothing. It's been in a status (or should that be stasis) of "post-production" ever since.

More about it here ---> https://popcultmaster.com/2022/08/05/the-fusion-of-a-con/

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It's brilliant marketing, actually. If you know your movie is going to be terrible and bomb at the box office and get bad reviews from the critics, why not cancel it? Then you can sit back and wait for the fans to demand it gets released, and then roll out some "director's" or "ultimate" cut and get 2 or 3 times the revenue you would have from a run of the mill stinker.

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ahhh , the "Banned movie/book" phenomenon. It could be that , although people want to see those because they are banned for being too juicy , whereas this is shelved for being shit .

But theres always the "want what you cant have" or "grass is greener" psychology


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That's what I was thinking as well.

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Probably "Bill Cosby: 77", which had completed filming (it was a stand-up comedy special) and slated for release on Netflix in 2014 until they pulled the plug.

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Don’s Plum: a 2001 black-and-white film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire.

Nothing Lasts Forever: a 1984 b&w film starring Zack Galligan, and featuring two stars of Ghostbusters.

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Weren’t there some Kevin Spacey movies that he filmed before his controversy that have been permanently shelved?

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He finished a movie, All the Money in the World, and after the scandal they deleted his scenes and reshot them with Christopher Plummer.

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