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-   -   What are the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood? (https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/411248-what-best-unproduced-scripts-hollywood.html)

Slow Hands 02-24-05 01:37 AM

What are the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood?
 
I always hear about scripts that are great but no one produced them yet for certain reasons and studios are just sitting on them. Most recently the Tonight, He Comes script Will Smith is now attached to. I know I Am Legend has been a pretty popular script. Terry Gilliam's The Defective Detective has been talked about for a while. WB is sitting on a script which had Samuel L. Jackson attached called Catching Hell about a detective tracking a man possesed by the devil. Anyone know of any others? I found this site but a few of the scripts have been produced.

http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/m...wpage&pid=2667

Cygnet74 02-24-05 02:17 AM

Edward Ford by Lem Dobbs - Possibly the best known unproduced screenplay in Hollywood. Based on a real life friend of Dobbs, and written in 1979, it's been doing the rounds ever since. Dobbs himself appears in the screenplay under the disguise of "Luke" - see also the fantastic Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation - as a friend of the titular character; a loser arriving in Hollywood in the 1960s desperate to be a 1940s B-movie actor like the ones listed in his obsessively-maintained index.

Avatar by James Cameron - Not technically a screenplay but rather a "scriptment", a combination of both screenplay and treatment. A stunningly majestic science-fiction piece that if produced (especially if by Cameron) would surely rate highly against sci-fi classics like Alien and Blade Runner.

One Saliva Bubble by David Lynch & Mark Frost - it's David Lynch so you won't be surprised to learn this is an utterly bizarre screenplay. It revolves around a malfunctioning space weapon (the titular saliva bubble causes a short circuit at a ground control station) which causes amongst other things, all the cheese in Newtonville, Kansas to disappear. I shit you not.

Red, White, Black, and Blue by Andrew Kevin Walker - an ultra-gritty police drama (as you'd expect from the writer of Se7en ) about a trio of 1970s vice cops who are trying to stop a huge shipment of heroin headed for Los Angeles.

Honourable Mentions:
Carnivore by The Wachowski Brothers
Alien 3 by David Twohy
A Crowded Room by James Cameron

Slow Hands 02-24-05 08:11 AM


Originally Posted by Cygnet74
Red, White, Black, and Blue by Andrew Kevin Walker - an ultra-gritty police drama (as you'd expect from the writer of Se7en ) about a trio of 1970s vice cops who are trying to stop a huge shipment of heroin headed for Los Angeles.

If someone like Scorsese did this script it would be amazing. Kevin Smith's Eight Billion Dollar Man script I understand is very good as well.

WB really should've gone with this Catwoman script.

7. CATWOMAN - written by Daniel Waters.

Dans true-blue, no-editing-by-Burton spoof on the superhero genre.

I always thought the best part of BATMAN RETURNS was Dans creation of Catwoman. She was like a leather-clad personification of murderous feminism.

Someone else thought so, too, because they got Dan to write her her own movie. The result is this: Catwoman has been taken in by her mom, who lives in Oasisburg. A self-contained city in the middle of the desert. Its Emerald City meets Las Vegas according to Dan. And women are heavily repressed.

A group of wacky superheroes protect the burg (much to the pleasure of its fawning citizens).

But the heroes are actually zeros and they plan to blow (up) this burg like they do every time they visit a town, loot it and leave (faking their own deaths).

Catwoman is brought back to life. And she stops the good-bad guys while freeing the women of Oasisburg of the slavery known as the human male.

Selina Kyle is even more interesting than Catwoman and Im glad Dan spent so much time on her. She has a hellish casino job where the women have to wear clothes with their stomachs exposed and grease down corpulent old ladies who are sunbathing. Shes also immersed in a duplicitous love affair between the burgs two most eligible bachelors: local architect (Brock Leviathan) and local reporter (Lewis Lane). One of these men is the leader of the good-bad superheroes. The other is the man Selina loves.

Will this all work out with a breathtakingly intricate scene that features arcane doodads and Dans love for elaborate syntax? Does a cat hate water?

DonnachaOne 02-24-05 03:14 PM

I asked this question before. http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=352458


Originally Posted by DonnachaOne
When i first heard about Alien Vs. Predator's greenlight, I was confused - I always thought there was a script finished, waiting to be filmed. I was half right; Peter Briggs had indeed written a script, based on the comic series, but the film was going to use a new story by Paul Anderson (The most untalented, unimaginitive hack that has ever cursed Hollywood).

Since then I've become more interested in scripts that could have become great, but never got the chance. Ridley Scott's adaptation of Matheson's I Am Legend. Kevin Smith's Superman Lives. Roger Rabbit in Toon Platoon. David Lynch's Ronnie Rocket. And, lately, Harlan Ellison's apparently brilliant I, Robot.

Anyone else know about films that could have been great, but blew up on the launch pad, so to speak? Anyone read any of these scripts, or even better, does anyone know where they can be found (for free if possible)? I'd loveto read the Lynch and Ellsion scripts. Also, if you could find the script for Sherlock Holmes and the Revenge Of Dracula, I'd be your best friend.

I'd love to hear what you had to say.

The thread mentions...
Resident Evil by George A Romero
One Saliva Bubble and Ronnie Rocket by David Lynch (Which you can read HERE)
Napoleon by Stanley Kubrick

Cygnet74 02-24-05 03:15 PM


Originally Posted by Slow Hands
If someone like Scorsese did this script it would be amazing.

actually i read it 5 or 6 years ago when it was making the rounds. it doesn't actually suit Scorsese. it plays more like if they'd done a gritty starsky and hutch with some 70's camp thrown in, instead of a full blown spoof.

PopcornTreeCt 02-24-05 03:32 PM

George Washington by David Franzoni

DrStrangeL0ve71 02-24-05 04:12 PM

where can one find these scripts to read?

Kudama 02-24-05 06:16 PM

I liked the Alien III script by William Gibson way more than the one they went with.

They switched the hero mantle to Reese and the military theme was expanded into showing national rivalry between the humans.

(And I like Alien III more than most people. It's my second favorite in the series so far. But...what could have been? I guess we'll never know.)

lukewarmwater 11-26-05 04:09 PM

I'm bumping this thread to see if anyone knows where I can read:
Red, White, Black, and Blue by Andrew Kevin Walker
Or:
Carnivore by The Wachowski Brothers

fmian 11-28-05 06:07 AM

Surprisingly, it' didn't take me long to find these.

Alien 3 by William Gibson
Six Million Dollar Man by Kevin Smith
Carnivore by Larry and Andy Wachowski

Deftones 11-28-05 07:50 PM


Originally Posted by fmian


FWIW, those links aren't supported in Firefox for some reason.

fmian 11-29-05 02:11 AM

Try right click and save as.
They're just text files.


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