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Saved From Development Hell: Difference between revisions
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See also [[The Shelf of Movie Languishment]], where it gets done but not released.
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
* Though this is a dub rather than a series, ''[[Keroro Gunsou|Sgt. Frog]]'' certainly counts. [[ADV Films]] announced their license of the series in early 2006, then went completely silent about it for two years and never released so much as a cast list, let alone a DVD or anything close (all we got were trailers for the show appearing on some of ADV's releases from 2007, and some of the actors mentioning it in commentaries and convention appearances). Then ADV lost the rights to ''Frog'' — along with nearly 3 dozen other titles — in July 2008. [[
** The series then went through this ''again''. Funimation had originally announced the acquisition of the first 102 episodes, but stopped halfway through, [[Kodomo no Omocha|bringing back unpleasant memories of an earlier series of theirs]]. It took another year for Funimation to announce 26 more episodes, which were released in quick succession in July and August 2011.
* ''[[Slayers]]'' missed out on a direct fourth season in 1998 due to production issues and [[Megumi Hayashibara]] having schedule conflicts, and while there were more OVA's, a movie (''Slayers Premium'') and other media, it took ''eleven years'' for a fourth season to finally appear. A fifth then occurred the following year.
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== Film ==
* ''[[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
** The story of the film's stay in Development Hell--and the numerous script ideas that came before the final script--is a bonus feature on the movie's DVD.
* ''[[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''.
* [[Superman Returns|The fifth film]] in the ''[[Superman (Film)|Superman]]'' franchise was stuck in pre-production for nearly two decades. The first part of this was mostly the producers wanting to distance themselves from the failure of ''[[Superman IV the Quest For Peace]]'', while the later half was due to [[Executive Meddling]] driving director after [[Kevin Smith|director]] after director away from the project. ''Its'' proposed sequel similarly became mired in development hell, after ''Superman Returns''' lackluster performance at the box office caused a sequel to be put on the back burner, and Bryan Singer abandoned the project to direct ''[[Valkyrie]]'' instead. When a Superman film ''finally'' came back into production, it was as a [[Continuity Reboot]], ''[[Man of Steel]]'', with a new cast and director Zack Snyder, producer Christopher Nolan, and writer David Goyer. The latter two were responsible for the successful [[The Dark Knight Trilogy|reboot]] of the Batman franchise, incidentally... (see below)
* The failure of ''[[Batman and Robin (Film)|Batman and Robin]]'' also caused many projects for a fifth [[Batman (Film)|Batman]] movie to not take off (including a full-fledged sequel, an adaptation of ''[[Batman: Year One]]'', and a ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' film) until [[Batman Begins|a new one]] debuted eight years later.
* The rights to a live action adaptation of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' were sold to United Artists shortly before JRR Tolkien's death in 1973; it wasn't until 1994 that Peter Jackson was given approval to begin shooting (by Miramax) and [[The Lord of the Rings (Film)|the first film]] was not released until 2001 (by New Line).
** More recently, ''[[The Hobbit]]'' went though quite a development hell as well before finally being green-lit. The film then suffered additional problems involving creative control and the studio's refusal to allow filming to take place in New Zealand like the LOTR films, which caused then-director Guillermo del Toro to leave the project. Fortunately, Peter Jackson managed to retake control of the project and a full trailer has come out confirming the film's release in December 2012.
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* This happened to the 2002 ''[[Peter Pan]]''. The original plans were made by producer Lucy Fisher who acquired the rights in 1980.
* ''[[The Warriors Way]]'' was meant to come out early 2008... almost 3 years later it finally found itself in cinemas.
* The ''[[Tintin (Comic Book)]]'' film, which has a story very close to [[Indiana Jones]]: [[Steven Spielberg]] met the comic after ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark (Film)|Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'' was compared to the series, tried to make a movie but became dissatisfied and did ''[[The Last Crusade (Film)|The Last Crusade]]'' instead, and finally started motion capture (with [[Peter Jackson]]'s assistance) after ''[[Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (Film)|Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull]]'' was finished.
* ''[[Trick R Treat (Film)|Trick R Treat]]'' went through post-production hell. Which was supposed to have been released in 2007, But was eventually released in October of 2009 on DVD. Some saw this as a punishment to Bryan Singer from Warner Bros. who was disappointed with ''Superman Returns''.
* [[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 (Film)|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 (Film)|On Her Majesty's Secret Service]]'' is a minor case: it was first announced as a successor to ''[[Goldfinger (Film)|Goldfinger]]'' (''[[Thunderball (Film)|Thunderball]]'' came instead due to lawsuits and such), then after ''Thunderball'' (but the winter locations made producers prioritize ''[[You Only Live Twice (Film)|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]] -- the first one fell through when [[Ayn Rand]] wasn't able to secure final script approval, while the second one had a finished script (with Rand's approval) and was gearing up for production at [[NBC]], but that too was halted after Fred Silverman came to power at the network. Rand started work on her own script, but [[Author Existence Failure|she died]] with only a third of it finished. The film rights switched hands multiple times in the ensuing decades, and at one point such stars as [[Angelina Jolie]], [[Brad Pitt]], [[Charlize Theron]], [[Julia Roberts]], [[Anne Hathaway]] and [[Russell Crowe]] were all attached. All of their deals, however, fell through, and the current rights-holders rushed through an independently-financed production [[Money, Dear Boy|in order to prevent the film rights from reverting to the Rand estate]]. The result, released in 2011 as ''Atlas Shrugged: Part I'', was critically thrashed and went largely ignored even by the conservatives and libertarians that its marketing aggressively courted.
* ''[[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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* The french animated film ''[[The King and The Mockingbird]]'', which started production in [[The Golden Age of Animation|1948]], and wasn't finished until ''1980''.
* The ''[[Spaceballs (Film)|Spaceballs]]'' [[Animated Adaptation]].
* ''[[Delgo (Animation)|Delgo]]''. Development was begun in 1999 by Marc Adler, who wanted to make a big-budget, computer-animated film independent of titans like Disney and Dreamworks. Marc and his small animation studio, Fathom Studios, spent $40 million making the film, cast the likes of Burt Reynolds, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Val Kilmer, and took so long to finish it that by the time it was released, one of the actors had been dead for three years. When they couldn't get any major studio interested in the film, Fathom instead had a distributor-for-hire give the film a wide release, which it received on December 12, 2008. It is now famous for having [http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/delgo-worst-opening-ever.html the worst opening weekend of any wide-release film ever]. That the film itself is a [[
* The ''[[Astro Boy (Film)|Astro Boy]]'' movie was rumored for the longest time before finally getting made, with one version being [[What Could Have Been|a live action/CGI mix directed by Genndy Tartovsky]].
* ''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.
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[[Category:Film Tropes]]
[[Category:Saved From Development Hell]]
[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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