Saved From Development Hell: Difference between revisions
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== Comic Books ==
* [[Ultimate Marvel|Ultimate]] [[Hulk]] Versus [[Wolverine]] (Issue 3). Originally solicited for April
* [[Kevin Smith]]'s "[[Spider-Man]] - Black Cat: The Evil that Men Do" mini-series.
* [http://tinyurl.com/4tdgqpv Gemini Storm] was created in 2008, but had massive delays since everyone on the project was new to ongoing comics and weren't used to deadlines, especially the colourist. Finally released in March 2010. And then the second issue was on hold until December 2010. According to the notes though, Wood has stopped inking the pages, which has sped up the process and the new colourists are much more reliable.
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* ''[[Alien vs. Predator (film)|Alien vs. Predator]]'' is probably the most famous case of development hell. It was finally released in 2004 after more than a decade of different scripts, changes to the cast, false starts, orphaned tie-ins, several series of video games and even promotions of the believed-to-be-coming-soon movie.
* If ''AVP'' is the most famous case, ''[[Freddy vs. Jason]]'' is likely the second most famous, as the film was also famously mired in development hell for years; originally, the studios who owned the [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|two]] [[Friday the 13th (film)|franchises]] involved with the titular crossover had wanted to make it for years, but could never agree on how to make it (each studio wanted to license out the other's character and do the film their way). When New Line Cinema bought the rights to the ''Friday the 13th'' franchise, the film stayed in development hell as New Line went through numerous screenwriters and even more script ideas...until the two men who ended up writing the script for the film threw out every other script that came before them and set a list of rules to follow that respected both parent franchises involved as they wrote their script. The film was ''finally'' released in 2003, and ended up making more money than any other film in either of the parent franchises.
** The story of the film's stay in Development
* ''[[The X-Files]]: I Want to Believe'' suffered a similar ordeal, but in a smaller scale and shorter time period.
* One of the earliest examples of this was Howard Hughes's ''Hell's Angels'', which, due to Hughes's perfectionism and insistence on the latest film technology, took three years and a budget of $3.8 million to create, something unheard of at the time (and equalling somewhere on the order of $225 million in today's money). Two decades later, Hughes would take ''seven'' years to complete a similar film, ''Jet Pilot''.
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* For some unknown reason there was a 14-year gap between the fourth St. Trinian's movie (''The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery'', 1966) and the fifth (''The Wildcats of St. Trinian's'', 1980). But there's no mystery why there was a 27-year gap between ''Wildcats'' and the sixth (''St. Trinian's'', 2007); ''Wildcats'' was reportedly so dire that it's the only one not available on DVD.
* Carl Sagan wrote the 100-page film script for ''[[Contact (film)|Contact]]' in 1985. When it went to [[Development Hell]], he just [[Novelization|made a book out of it]]. The film was finally released in 1997.
* Whilst its stay in Development Hell was rather short, ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]: [[Advent Children]]'' does fit. Announced at TGS 2003, and originally targeted for a summer 2004 release, it ended up appearing in its original form in September 2005. The reason, according to [[Word of God|director Tetsuya Nomura]], was that the movie was originally meant to only be roughly
** ''Advent Children Complete'' again deserves a mention: it saw release in April 2009, after being announced at TGS 2006. Square Enix seem to have a habit of announcing things way before they're actually finished.
* Although it eventually got a 2005 release in the wake of ''Doom 3'', the ''[[Doom]]'' movie first began its life as a rumor shortly after the runaway success of the first game, and then a flurry of studio developments, press releases and wild fan rumors after ''Doom 2'' proved even more successful. At one point, according to the stories, [[What Could Have Been|Terry Gilliam was interested in directing, and Arnold Schwarzenegger would have starred as the space marine]], but then it sank back into development hell for another decade.
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* ''[[Inception]]'' went through a stint in development hell that was actually self-imposed; Christopher Nolan saw the film as his personal opus and spent ten years revising the script until he was sure it was the absolute best he could make it, and everything in the complicated story made sense.
** He was also waiting until he had enough clout in Hollywood to get the budget he wanted. After the success of ''[[The Dark Knight Saga|Batman Begins]]'' and ''The Dark Knight'', he was essentially given a blank check to do what he wanted.
* One of the strangest cases of development hell occurred with the film ''[[Phone Booth (film)|Phone Booth]]''. Writer [[Larry Cohen]] began work on the project in the 1960's as a project for [[Alfred Hitchcock]]. After Hitchcock died, the screenplay was shelved until [[Joel Schumacher]] read the screenplay and shot the film on a low budget for two weeks in 2000 (with a then-unknown Colin Farrell and Ron Eldard as the villain). After seeing a rough cut of the film, Fox shelved the project and re-shot Eldard's scenes with {{spoiler|Kiefer Sutherland}}. While the film was on the shelf, Cohen reworked parts of the Phone Booth screenplay, updated the technology and sold ''Cellular'' to New Line Cinema (which was released in 2004). Eventually, Fox scheduled Phone Booth for November
* This happened to the 2002 ''[[Peter Pan]]''. The original plans were made by producer Lucy Fisher who acquired the rights in 1980.
* ''[[The Warrior's Way]]'' was meant to come out early 2008... almost 3 years later it finally found itself in cinemas.
* The ''[[Tintin]]'' film, which has a story very close to [[Indiana Jones]]: [[Steven Spielberg]] met the comic after ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'' was compared to the series, tried to make a movie but became dissatisfied and did ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade|The Last Crusade]]'' instead, and finally started motion capture (with [[Peter Jackson]]'s assistance) after ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' was finished.
* ''[[Trick 'r Treat|Trick R Treat]]'' went through post-production hell. Which was supposed to have been released in 2007, But was eventually released in October
* [[James Cameron]] wrote the script for ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' in 1994, and planned for a 1999 release. It took ten years for technology to advance to the point where he could convincingly and reasonably depict another planet with CGI. [[Scenery Porn|He succeeded.]]
* [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] has two main examples: ''[[Goldeneye]]'' (which emerged from the failed third Timothy Dalton film) and the upcoming ''[[Skyfall (film)|Skyfall]]'' (EON started to arrange things. Then MGM got into financial problems, and it was kept on hold until the studio solved them). ''[[On Her Majesty's Secret Service]]'' is a minor case: it was first announced as a successor to ''[[Goldfinger]]'' (''[[Thunderball]]'' came instead due to lawsuits and such), then after ''Thunderball'' (but the winter locations made producers prioritize ''[[You Only Live Twice]]'').
* The film adaptation of ''[[Atlas Shrugged (film)|Atlas Shrugged]]''. There were two failed attempts in [[The Seventies]] to turn it into a [[Miniseries]]
* ''[[Superbad]]'' was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg in the mid-'90s, as a way to prove that they could write a movie script. Years later, after working with Judd Apatow on the short-lived TV series ''[[Undeclared]]'', they pitched the script to him. Originally, Seth Rogen was to play the role of Seth, and he recorded a script reading of the lines back in '02. During the early and mid-2000s, they could not find a company who wanted to distribute the film. The script also went through a few revisions, the whole idea of Seth and Evan going to separate colleges, and the emotional friendship stuff was added in a later revision. Anyway, after the success of ''[[Talladega Nights]]'', Apatow and Rogen pitched the script to Columbia, and they accepted it. But by this time, Rogen looked too old to play the role of Seth, so they had Jonah Hill take the role.
* The film version of the [[Dave Barry]] novel ''[[Big Trouble]]'' had been filmed, had a star-studded cast and was looking to be a big box-office hit...and then September 11 happened a week before the film was to be released. Being a comedy about a plane hijacking with a subplot about two teenagers playing a large-scale tag game called "Killer", the movie was shelved indefinitely. It finally appeared in theaters with little promotion in April 2002. Despite decent reviews, it failed spectacularly at the box office.
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* [[George Lucas]] began development on ''[[Red Tails]]'' in 1988 but could not get any studio to produce the film (due to studios being uneasy on an adventure film with a mostly black cast). Finally, he decided finance the film himself and had most of it filmed between 2009 and 2010. Then the film entered post-production hell due to the many scenes of visual effects, the difficulty in finding a distributor and the film's director being unavailable for reshoots (due to his work on the show ''[[Treme]]''). The film was finally released in 2012.
* The rights remake of the 1976 movie ''Sparkle'' were bought by [[Whitney Houston]]'s production company in the mid 90's, and [[Aaliyah]] was intended to be cast as the lead. However, after Aaliyah's death in a plane crash in 2001, the film was not produced. In 2011, Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil, the producers of ''[[Jumping the Broom]]'', took on ''Sparkle'' as their next project and filming ended in November 2011. The movie has a set release date of August 17, 2012.
* ''[[John Carter of Mars]]'', based on [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]' Barsoom stories, was mired in Development Hell since ''1931'', as almost every major studio in Hollywood tried and failed in putting a film together. At various points in the 2000s, Robert Rodriguez, Kerry Conran, John Favreau, and Brad Bird had been attached to direct the project. In 2006, Disney acquired the rights after Paramount's attempt at filming it failed, Paramount having acquired the rights from Touchstone (a Disney company) in 2002. Actual filming began in January 2010, with plans for a 2012 release, and it ''was'' released in March
* James Clavell's ''Tai-Pan'' and James A. Michener's ''Caravans'' had their film rights bought up by MGM, with the 1967 promotional short "Lionpower from MGM" announcing both as future projects. [[Fall of the Studio System|But MGM was falling apart]] and ultimately both books reached the screen through other means. ''Caravans'' arrived in 1978 via Universal, and ''Tai-Pan'' in 1986 through De Laurentiis Entertainment Group.
* [[Sin City]] 2, which was supposed to be released in 2008 is finally in [http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2012/04/sin-city-2-is-go-at-last.html production.]
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** Incidentally, by "too large to publish" we mean that if GRRM had not split the story, he'd be handing us a book with [[Doorstopper|1600 pages]] in it. ''Before'' the lengthy [[Loads and Loads of Characters|House indexes]] in the back.
** Even better, his original plans were for Book 2 (now called ''A Clash of Kings'') to be entitled ''A Dance with Dragons'', and first editions of ''Game'' have it listed as the sequel. In other words, we've been waiting for ''some'' book, ''any'' book, called "A Dance with Dragons" for well over a decade.
** Martin's decreased writing pace has also raised concerns because the series is being adapted for television as ''[[Game of Thrones]]''. At current plans,<ref>Weiss and Benioff are trying to get two seasons for ''A Storm of Swords'', and the chronology of the ''Feast for Crows/Dance with Dragons'' conglomerate precludes them being squashed into one season</ref>
** Fortunately for the fans, GRRM did reveal several major plot points to the producers of the show in case he got "hit by a truck".
* Margaret Mitchell spent nearly ten years writing ''[[Gone with the Wind]]'', and she had previously written several other hundred plus page stories which never made it to publication.
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* Saban had been trying to get a network to pick up an Americanized version of ''[[Super Sentai]]'' for ''years'', but no one had faith in the idea. He finally got his lucky break as the then president of Fox Kids had previously had tried to do the same thing before but failed. Thus ''[[Power Rangers]]'' was created, and the rest is history.
* More specifically a DVD release of a classic TV show: The DVD box set of ''[[The Man from U.N.C.L.E.]]'' lingered in [[Development Hell]] for years due, among other reasons, to these factors:
##There were legal issues surrounding the 3rd-season episode "The Pieces of Fate Affair", scripted by [[Harlan Ellison]], who, in true Ellison fashion, had filled the script with [[Take That
##It was very difficult to find top-quality masters of many of the first-season episodes; for quite some time, in fact, it was feared that they had been lost.
##There were disputes over who was entitled to release the show on DVD.
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* [[Mission of Burma]] released the EP ''Signals, Calls and Marches'' in 1981 and the studio album ''Vs.'' in 1982. Then singer Roger Miller lost his hearing. Sophomore effort ''ONoffON'' appeared in 2004.
* [[Chicago]]'s ''Stone of Sisyphus'' was originally slated to be ''Chicago XXII'' in 1994, but Reprise rejected the album. They responded by leaving the label and making a big band-styled album as their 22nd. ''Stone'' would eventually be released in 2008 as ''Chicago XXXII'' on another label (Rhino) mostly intact.
* [[Daniel Amos]] finished recording their third album ''Horrendous Disc'' in 1978. Many
* Dystopia had released two full-length albums (''Human = Garbage'' and ''The Aftermath'') based off tracks from various splits they did with other bands, but their first full album with new material had been in the working process for many years. Tracks were recorded in 2004, but due to label issues they didn't get released at the time. It wasn't until 2008, nine years after ''The Aftermath'' and several years after the band broke up, that ''Dystopia'' was finally released.
* Orchestral Manœuvres in the Dark's 11th studio album was announced in late 2002 and finally released, after several release dates were announced and retracted, in late 2010, under the title "History of Modern." Since Paul Humphreys rejoined the band during that time, a whole new album was recorded with him, and only one of the songs was retained (in rerecorded form). So technically the album that was announced in 2002 is ''still'' unreleased.
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* [[Limp Bizkit]]'s ''The Unquestionable Truth (Part 2)''. The first one came out in 2005, and the band went on hiatus shortly after its release. They reunited later, and released ''Gold Cobra'' in 2011, then announced that ''The Unquestionable Truth 2'' was '''not''' cancelled and would be released in 2012.
* Recording for [[Yes|Yes's]] ''Big Generator'' album began in 1985, with Trevor Horn producing. Due to [[Creative Differences]] between Horn and guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist/co-writer Trevor Rabin, work resumed on the album with Rabin as producer until its release in 1987.
* The [[Big Star]] [[Cover Album|tribute album]] ''Big Star, Small World'' was completed and scheduled for a Spring of 1998 release by Ignition Records. Ignition went under before it could be released though, and the compilation didn't see the light of day until 2006, when Koch Records bought the rights. As a result, the album ended up an [[Unintentional Period Piece]] of sorts: Most of the contributing artists were at their height of popularity in the mid-nineties, and three bands who appeared on the album were long broken up when it came out
** Big Star's album ''Third/Sister Lovers'' was released three years after they broke up.
* [[Lupe Fiasco]]'s third album, ''Lasers'', was shelved in 2008 by his label because they thought it wasn't "pop" enough. A combination of Lupe caving to pressure and rewriting some songs (something he has said will forever taint his own opinion of the album) and general fan outrage led to the album finally being released in 2011.
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* ''[[In the Groove]] 3'' was in this until recently, thanks to Konami's lawsuit.
* ''[[Mother 3]]'' was originally planned for release on the Nintendo 64's 64DD peripheral. Unfortunately, the 64DD didn't turn out so well and it was scrapped. It was then later put on the [[Game Boy Advance]] and was one of the last titles for the system. [[No Export for You|There was no official English translation.]] American and European fans were not happy, though at least the English fan translation is complete so Anglophones in North America and Europe can play it in their native language (as well as any non-native speakers fluent enough to read this page).
** Not just
* 3D Realms' game ''[[Prey]]'' began development in 1995, and was finally released in 2006 after they farmed out development to another team. The release of ''Prey'' served to give fans hope that 3D Realms' ''other'' long-awaited title, ''[[Duke Nukem Forever]]'', would eventually find its way out of [[Development Hell]] as well (which it did, as mentioned above).
* ''[[Alan Wake]]'', first announced way back in 2004, finally released Spring 2010.
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* ''Nights Journey of Dreams'' was in development hell ever since the 1996 release of the original ''[[NiGHTS Into Dreams]]'' and was originally going to be for the ''Sega Saturn'' using a tilt sensor in the Analog Pad under the working title ''Air Nights''. It was ported to Dreamcast development then shelved. It eventually escaped hell in 2007 as the Wii title we see today.
* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' was announced in 1999 as "Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms", but the final product didn't show up until 2007. Also, the game went through many changes during this time. For example, the early incarnation of the game featured a realistic artstyle like TF1 and a more serious tone, while the final product features a cartoonish artstyle and a more comical tone.
* ''[[Shira Oka Second Chances]]'' is a stat-driven [[Dating Sim]] inspired by the [[Tokimeki Memorial]] series, but [[No Export for You|written originally in English]]. Development began around 2005. A demo was released to the public in summer 2010. The full retail game was released on Impulse Driven on December 10, 2010.
* ''[[Too Human]]''.
* ''[[Kameo: Elements of Power]]'' was originally announced as a launch title for the Gamecube. It later came out as a launch title for the Xbox 360, four years after it was supposed to come out (having a cancelled Xbox development on its way).
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* The games that eventually became ''[[Pokémon Red and Blue]]'' were initially announced in an early form in 1990, and didn't come out until 1996.
* ''[[Gran Turismo]] 5'' was revealed on E3 2005. In 2008, a demo version, ''Gran Turismo 5 Prologue'' was released and sold well. In 2009, the full version was announced, and got a release date for February 2010... which was then delayed to November 2010 due to technical issues.
* [[Game Mod
* ''[[Psychonauts]]'' was originally going to be a horror-like platformer published by Microsoft, and was going to be an Xbox-exclusive. A trailer was shown at E3 (and can be found on the discs of ''[[Blinx the Time Sweeper]]'' and ''[[Voodoo Vince]]'') in 2002, and the game was originally set for a 2003 release. But later into development, Double Fine decided to change the game's mood from scary to funny, and Microsoft refused to publish the game because of this, so the game was delayed as Double Fine scrambled around to find a publisher, until they found Majesco in '04. The game was then announced for PC and [[PlayStation 2]] as well as Xbox, and was finally released in '05.
** ''[[Brutal Legend]]'' had a similar story. Originally, Vivendi Universal was publishing it, but once they merged with Sierra (didn't they merge with Sierra? Correct me if I'm wrong), Double Fine was left out in the cold, and again, they had to scramble around for a publisher. They found EA, but then
* ''[[Dragon Quest VII]]'' entered development in 1996 for the 64DD, but switched to the Sony Playstation in 1997. It was not released until 2000, and its release in 2001 basically let it get [[Overshadowed by Awesome]] considering that the Xbox and Playstation2 were already out and the Gamecube was ''just around the corner''. Not to mention,[[Seinfeld Is Unfunny|it got complained because it looked dated]], and still does seem quite dated translationwise with the engrish-y names for some things.
* [[Final Fantasy XIII]] [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30640/Exclusive_Behind_The_Scenes_Of_Square_Enixs_Final_Fantasy_XIII.php got into development hell right after its initial trailer], reasons varied from an under-developed Crystal Tools engine to late play testing.
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* ''Destino'', the unlikely collaboration between [[Walt Disney]] and [[Salvador Dali]], was first conceived back in 1946, but didn't reach screens until 57 years later. The home video release also counts; a ''Walt Disney Treasures'' set was announced for 2008 but dropped, the short and a making-of documentary eventually appearing as extras on the ''[[Fantasia]]/Fantasia 2000'' Blu-Ray release in 2010.
* The show ''[[Ni Hao, Kai-Lan]]'' was originally announced for Spring 2007, but didn't materialize until February 2008, though the characters from the show were featured for months in the now-defunct Nick Jr. Magazine.
* Getting ''Daria'' on official DVD was [[Development Hell]] for many years. To the point where fans all but gave up on seeing an official DVD at all. It was finally
* An [[Animated Adaptation]] of the Hungarian play ''[[The Tragedy Of Man]]'' had its script written way back in 1983. Production began in '88. The finished film was released in late 2011.
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