Unreleased movies?

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm a fan of Leo Fong, Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton and George Chung, so when I discovered this morning that they'd all apparently made a movie together in 1988 called "Jungle Heat", I excitedly tried to track it down. But, no reviews on any of the sites, which is always a clue, and no evidence of it ever being released on VHS or DVD. Nothing on any of the torrent sites, no clips on Youtube.

So this is either a movie which was real, but got a very very limited release and then nothing; or details about its pre-production were recorded somewhere as if it was real, this made it all the way to IMDB then all the sites which pull from IMDB (not impossible, it's been going forever) but it never got off the ground.

This isn't so much for the famous unmade movies which everyone knows about, but something you're fairly sure was a tax write-off for some criminals somewhere, or got into the cinemas / VHS in some obscure part of the world but then disappeared completely. Do you have any favourites?

[mothman]

That Fantastic Four movie they made just to stop the rights reverting before the option expired...

[McChesney Duntz]

One I've always been fascinated with is Young Lust, a Robert Stigwood-produced, Bruce Wagner-penned comedy (featuring Fran Drescher and Dana Carvey, among others) that was apparently so much of a coked-up mess that it never saw the light of day (and the experience inspired Wagner to become the bard of Southern California nightmarishness thereafter): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Lust_(film)

And I believe that Nothing Lasts Forever - a neo-retro sci-fi/fantasy pic by SNL filmmaker Tom Schiller that, while featuring the likes of Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, never got a proper theatrical release and has only been seen in sporadic cable-TV broadcasts since - counts in this category as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Lasts_Forever_(film)

(Mort Sahl's in it too. I wonder if our friend MortSahlFan is at all au fait widdit...)

[Small Man Big Horse]

And I believe that Nothing Lasts Forever - a neo-retro sci-fi/fantasy pic by SNL filmmaker Tom Schiller that, while featuring the likes of Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, never got a proper theatrical release and has only been seen in sporadic cable-TV broadcasts since - counts in this category as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Lasts_Forever_(film)

(Mort Sahl's in it too. I wonder if our friend MortSahlFan is at all au fait widdit...)

I saw that recently and there's some discussion of it here: https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=84594.msg4733611#msg4733611 while it also had it's own thread a long while back: https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=25683.0

[McChesney Duntz]

You know, I saw that post (but not the ancient thread), and had apparently memory-holed it. Appy polly loggies, SMBH.

Here's something you may or may not know of or be interested in: a book about this film, Tom Schiller's other work, and even a deep dive on a film written by some of his SNL colleagues around the same time as NLF that never got made. Quite a good read for the target audience, whoever we may be: https://nothinglostforever.com/

[Small Man Big Horse]

You know, I saw that post (but not the ancient thread), and had apparently memory-holed it. Appy polly loggies, SMBH.

Here's something you may or may not know of or be interested in: a book about this film, Tom Schiller's other work, and even a deep dive on a film written by some of his SNL colleagues around the same time as NLF that never got made. Quite a good read for the target audience, whoever we may be: https://nothinglostforever.com/

There's no need to apologise in the slightest, just thought I'd mention it in case you wondered if it's worth tracking down.

And that book looks pretty interesting, thanks for that, I've added it to my Amazon wish list so that I get round to reading it at some point soon.

[McChesney Duntz]

There's no need to apologise in the slightest, just thought I'd mention it in case you wondered if it's worth tracking down.

Oh, I have it - DL'd it from YouTube in that brief period it was up there. Like it very much, though I'm hardly surprised that MGM thought it unreleasable; imagine, a 1984 release starring Bill Murray less commercial than The Razor's Edge! Hope I get a chance to see it on a big screen one day.

[Shit Good Nose]

I'm a fan of Leo Fong, Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton and George Chung, so when I discovered this morning that they'd all apparently made a movie together in 1988 called "Jungle Heat", I excitedly tried to track it down. But, no reviews on any of the sites, which is always a clue, and no evidence of it ever being released on VHS or DVD. Nothing on any of the torrent sites, no clips on Youtube.

So this is either a movie which was real, but got a very very limited release and then nothing; or details about its pre-production were recorded somewhere as if it was real, this made it all the way to IMDB then all the sites which pull from IMDB (not impossible, it's been going forever) but it never got off the ground.

A topic of much discussion amongst martial arts film fans on the old Empire forum.  A couple of peeps claimed to have seen it on either laserdisc or VCD, and one described some scenes in detail (don't ask me to repeat though - we're going back at least 15 years).  The title cap here - https://www.friendspire.com/movies/6144c2c95068042ec4f3ca98 - is one that was often thrown around in the relating threads.  Personally I have my doubts as I don't recall Rothrock or Norton mentioning it in any interviews or commentaries, and I don't think Bey Logan ever mentioned it in one of his books and, regardless of what naughty antics he's been up to, that cunt's seen pretty much every martial arts film ever made, so I agree with you and reckon one of your latter assumptions is correct.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

In the early eighties, Terrence Malick's partner, Michie Gleason, signed a deal with Bert Schneider (producer of Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces) for a project produced by Lorimar. This was supposed to be very political, but the studio assumed that it was supposed to some arthouse softcore drama, and it has never been screened outside of festivals. As Schneider made the feud with Lorimar public, it contributed to the film being his final project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_English_(1981_film)

I guess there's no need to talk in details about The Day the Clown Cried, but reports vary about its degree of completion.

There's also an egregious case in France with Abdellatif Kechiche. After Blue Is the Warmest Color, Kechiche decided to make some sort of long ensemble coming-of-age project during a mid-90s summer in the South of France, first as a stand-alone film, then as a two-parter, called Mektoub, My Love. When the producers discovered this during post-production, they decided to withdraw fundings (because the project was less and less marketable, and the delays for editing prevented it from being screened in Cannes as planned), and Kechiche auctioned some of his personal properties, including his Palme d'Or, to find money to complete it.
The first part was still released as "Canto Uno" in 2018 to positive reviews, particularly in the French press.
And that's where it gets interesting. First, Kechiche decided at this point to turn the project into a three-parter. Then, as #MeToo was gaining traction, reports on how he had reportedly bullied Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos for sex scenes during production of Blue Is... resurfaced, and reports on Mektoub, My Love were even more worrying, as he had apparently pressured his lead actress to receive non-simulated oral sex for a scene at the bathroom of a nightclub, promising her that the footage would be artfully edited. After days and nights on the set, with the actress and her companion getting exhausted and inebriated (Kechiche had deliberately been at this point offering booze to the cast for verisimilitude), he managed to wear them down, and they accepted to shoot the scene. It was supposed to be featured in the middle part, "Intermezzo", of the now triptych, which was even more meandering (at 3 hrs and a half) than "Canto Uno", as its events mostly take place during the same night at a club.
Perhaps because of Kechiche's cachet, "Intermezzo" was part of the 2019 competition in Cannes. The actress, who had been denied seeing any cut of the film until then, discovered that Kechiche had actually used the entire raw footage from the take, around 13 minutes, to show the sex act in full, using the most explicit angles. She left the screening, dropped out of the press conference, and begged Kechiche to make edits.
Kechiche posted an open letter where he stated that this was the result of a major conspiracy orchestrated partly by the agents of Exarchopoulos and Seydoux (her family is at the head, among others, of both Pathé and Gaumont, the two main studios in France). He also offered to make a few cuts if the actress was willing to tell him face to face what she wanted taken out of the scene.
We're still in a standstill today, which means that neither "Intermezzo" nor the third and supposedly final part of his magnum opus, which is also completed, have been released. His own production company actually went bankrupt and was liquidated a few months after the 2019 screening.

[chveik]

His own production company actually went bankrupt and was liquidated a few months after the 2019 screening.

good. the guy's a scumbag

[Small Man Big Horse]

Oh, I have it - DL'd it from YouTube in that brief period it was up there. Like it very much, though I'm hardly surprised that MGM thought it unreleasable; imagine, a 1984 release starring Bill Murray less commercial than The Razor's Edge! Hope I get a chance to see it on a big screen one day.

It's bizarre isn't it, I know the world of Hollywood finance can be murky as hell but given all of the cast, after the success of Gremlins and Ghostbusters you'd have thought they'd release it, even if it involved a completely misleading trailer.

[Glebe]

And I believe that Nothing Lasts Forever - a neo-retro sci-fi/fantasy pic by SNL filmmaker Tom Schiller that, while featuring the likes of Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, never got a proper theatrical release and has only been seen in sporadic cable-TV broadcasts since - counts in this category as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Lasts_Forever_(film)

(Mort Sahl's in it too. I wonder if our friend MortSahlFan is at all au fait widdit...)

Oh wait, I see Zack Galligan is in it, this is the film he said he did with Bill Murray and Murray was a bit of a prick to him:

Why Bill Murray Was A Jerk To Zach Galligan On 'Nothing Lasts Forever' And The Latest On Gremlins 3.

So I thought I'd breeze on to the set and Bill Murray would be all excited and "oh hey this is the guy I'm going to be acting with" I mean you've got to remember I was 18. What do I know about the world or life, or how anything works? I'm a senior in High School. I was a kid. So I come in thinking we'd be pals and Bill Murray comes in, says Hi to Tom (Schiller) – I can see it like it was yesterday – he takes a glance at me and a tad condescendingly turns to Tom and says (Zach in spot on Bill Murray voice): "So, who's the KID?" Tom says "that's Zach, have you met him?" and Bill turns back to Tom and says "well has he paid his dues yet?" and I laughed – I thought he was joking, because how could an 18-year-old possibly have paid his dues? But it seemed like he was serious. And then he ignored me for an hour, and I thought "what a dick" and for the rest of the film he essentially antagonised me. The reason why he antagonised me, which I found out later, was that his character and my character were Nemeses, they do not like each other and he thought (and Bill is an unusual guy) I wasn't an experienced enough actor, which is true as it was my movie debut, not experienced enough to pal around with him on set and then 'snap back' in to character in order to make the enmity believable or plausible – he thought he would MAKE me not like him, and then after the movie be friendly.

[Shit Good Nose]

In the early eighties, Terrence Malick's partner, Michie Gleason, signed a deal with Bert Schneider (producer of Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces) for a project produced by Lorimar. This was supposed to be very political, but the studio assumed that it was supposed to some arthouse softcore drama, and it has never been screened outside of festivals. As Schneider made the feud with Lorimar public, it contributed to the film being his final project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_English_(1981_film)

I guess there's no need to talk in details about The Day the Clown Cried, but reports vary about its degree of completion.

There's also an egregious case in France with Abdellatif Kechiche. After Blue Is the Warmest Color, Kechiche decided to make some sort of long ensemble coming-of-age project during a mid-90s summer in the South of France, first as a stand-alone film, then as a two-parter, called Mektoub, My Love. When the producers discovered this during post-production, they decided to withdraw fundings (because the project was less and less marketable, and the delays for editing prevented it from being screened in Cannes as planned), and Kechiche auctioned some of his personal properties, including his Palme d'Or, to find money to complete it.
The first part was still released as "Canto Uno" in 2018 to positive reviews, particularly in the French press.
And that's where it gets interesting. First, Kechiche decided at this point to turn the project into a three-parter. Then, as #MeToo was gaining traction, reports on how he had reportedly bullied Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos for sex scenes during production of Blue Is... resurfaced, and reports on Mektoub, My Love were even more worrying, as he had apparently pressured his lead actress to receive non-simulated oral sex for a scene at the bathroom of a nightclub, promising her that the footage would be artfully edited. After days and nights on the set, with the actress and her companion getting exhausted and inebriated (Kechiche had deliberately been at this point offering booze to the cast for verisimilitude), he managed to wear them down, and they accepted to shoot the scene. It was supposed to be featured in the middle part, "Intermezzo", of the now triptych, which was even more meandering (at 3 hrs and a half) than "Canto Uno", as its events mostly take place during the same night at a club.
Perhaps because of Kechiche's cachet, "Intermezzo" was part of the 2019 competition in Cannes. The actress, who had been denied seeing any cut of the film until then, discovered that Kechiche had actually used the entire raw footage from the take, around 13 minutes, to show the sex act in full, using the most explicit angles. She left the screening, dropped out of the press conference, and begged Kechiche to make edits.
Kechiche posted an open letter where he stated that this was the result of a major conspiracy orchestrated partly by the agents of Exarchopoulos and Seydoux (her family is at the head, among others, of both Pathé and Gaumont, the two main studios in France). He also offered to make a few cuts if the actress was willing to tell him face to face what she wanted taken out of the scene.
We're still in a standstill today, which means that neither "Intermezzo" nor the third and supposedly final part of his magnum opus, which is also completed, have been released. His own production company actually went bankrupt and was liquidated a few months after the 2019 screening.

Chuff knows why (I thought Blue Is The Warmest Colour was massively overrated, good performances from the leads aside), but I did actually watch the complete as-released version (i.e. parts 1 and 2) of Mektoub, My Love.  Those early critic reviews of it being embarrassingly terrible AND fairly dodgy were spot on, it's fucking shit.  Quite how it's now become, amongst casual "non-professional" viewers, this worthy human drama epic is completely beyond me.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Unless you were at the Cannes screening from 2019, you haven't seen part two. The 3 hr film, Canto Uno, is only the first part.
The whole project is supposed to be an adaptation of a novel by the same writer the 2008 Palme d'Or winner The Class is based on (he also played the lead in the adaptation). Except that Kechiche let the scenes he shot play "organically", which means that none of the plot from the book has actually been featured so far in the films (after more than six and a half hours at this point), which are actually more of a loose autobiography for Kechiche. And the main character has mostly stayed in the background, even like some kind of a peeping Tom.

I have to acknowledge that I think that Kechiche capture the dynamics of people partying during summer quite right, with groups gaining and losing members, going from place to place without sticking to some clearly established plan. And the whole sequence about filming the birth of the lamb is a standout.
But the whole project reeks of self-complacency, and Kechiche has clearly developed some fixation on asses that exceed anything involving feet from Tarantino (there's some definite wink to the audience from Tarantino when he puts together such shots). The opening scene from Canto Uno fixates on the butt of the lead, which may arguably have something to do with the somewhat creepy passive interest the lead, her male friend (who peeps her having sex through the window), has for her. It then gets worse, as halfway through the movie, there's a scene where she changes clothes in her room at the family farm, and there's a good minute of the actress in her thongs seen from the back while she takes her time to put in a different pair of shorts. She's all alone, but the director still has the exact same gaze for the camera from the opening scene.

Blue Is the Warmest Colour suffered from some extremely heavy-handed didacticism about social classes, mostly conveyed through food. There's an insane amount of time spent dealing with pasta and mouths, as spaghetti with tomato sauce are repeatedly depicted as a social marker for the working class. And of course, the sex scenes were totally some male fantasy about lesbians, shot the way porn handles lesbian scenes for a straight male audience, as opposed to something Chantal Akerman, for instance, could have shot.

So, at this point in his career, Kechiche can fuck himself. Or go to hell. But he still has supporters. The reason I was reminded about Mektoub is that yesterday, there was a conversation on a French arthouse film message board, where people were still asking about the release of Intermezzo, and found it a tragedy that he hasn't been able so far to finish his magnum opus.

[Shit Good Nose]

I didn't realise the (proper) second part was a completely separate film - I thought part 1 was the two made parts shoved together, and I misread what you wrote.  Consider my hat fucked and flipped, and horrified that there's another nearly-4 fucking hours of it.

The first one, however, is still absolutely terrible.

[McChesney Duntz]

Here's one I just heard about, which, if things are proceeding at the pace they seem to be, no one will ever see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Years_(film)

[Shit Good Nose]

Here's one I just heard about, which, if things are proceeding at the pace they seem to be, no one will ever see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Years_(film)

Guaranteed to be a) absolute dogshit and b) turning up on the torrents way before then.

[Bad Ambassador]

It's cute they assume they'll still be in business in 100 years.

[mothman]

Rémy Martin are celebrating their tricentenary in three years, so I guess they have a fair degree of confidence!

[notjosh]

Louis CK's I Love You Daddy was pulled after the wankbeast article was published, and he ended up buying all the distribution rights back. I think it found its way online but was never officially released.

[Brundle-Fly]

This was a shame.

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/sienna-miller-says-hippie-hippie-shake-will-probably-never-be-released-171230159.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGBVLEMcjOF7gEbef1l9n_piWJ4maNLXCwwPwK3OYNbCBH4qlJD4DrULje8Grisp5HQhwBb6okGNqtMqXC12Y4V_fWA-AsxQ7HzP0q3I7DkXo6j7Kqvk6PYGyCjXnqXE9suRjwk2M_Mu2NTJIj1jyIKWSvUYmvSH8pbYuT1TqIl2

[13 schoolyards]

Louis CK's I Love You Daddy was pulled after the wankbeast article was published, and he ended up buying all the distribution rights back. I think it found its way online but was never officially released.

Yeah, there was a screener online not long after it was pulled. For full entertainment value try and find the reviews of it before his wankbeast status was confirmed, where the reviewers are taking it (and him) seriously instead of giving it a real review, which would run along the lines of "this is pretty amateurish and mildly creepy in a bad way"

[JesusAndYourBush]

There's an interview with Richard O'Brien where he claims to have filmed a sequel to Rocky Horror Show, he mentions he has the reels of film in a drawer but he doesn't want to release it because the time isn't right, or somesuch guff.  I can't find any info about a completed film on the net, just comments about unfinished/barely started projects, so can only conclude he was bullshitting.  Some of the fans are pretty obsessed and there'd surely be more info out there if a completed film existed.

[Shit Good Nose]

Louis CK's I Love You Daddy was pulled after the wankbeast article was published, and he ended up buying all the distribution rights back. I think it found its way online but was never officially released.

Yeah, there was a screener online not long after it was pulled. For full entertainment value try and find the reviews of it before his wankbeast status was confirmed, where the reviewers are taking it (and him) seriously instead of giving it a real review, which would run along the lines of "this is pretty amateurish and mildly creepy in a bad way"

Completely ignoring what we now know about him, it's fine, as in not terrible.  It's as good/bad as any 90s-on Woody Allen film, which it's so obviously ripping off/paying homage to.  It's also much better than Pootie Tang, for whatever that's worth.

[touchingcloth]

I've watched schlocky action horror Deep Rising about a million times because it was on one of the movie channels when we briefly had Sky in my teenage years.

The film ends with some people escaping a ship onto a deserted island only for the camera to zoom out to reveal a volcano and something massive crashing through the forest towards the beach where the protagonists had landed. Turns out, the island was supposed to be Skull Island and the something massive was a segue into a Sommers-led Kong film which never got developed.

[Famous Mortimer]

Another one which got me trying to track it down, emailing production companies and all sorts - 2016's "Beyond The Game". Check out this cast list of B-movie legends:

Eric Roberts; Danny Trejo; Michael Madsen, Olivier Gruner; Mark Dacascos; Lorenzo Lamas; Michael Jai White; Kelly Hu; Cynthia Rothrock; Kevin Sorbo; Casper Van Dien; Don "The Dragon" Wilson; Tony Todd; Billy Zane; Bai Ling; James Lew; Martin Kove; Armand Assante; Tom "Tiny" Lister; Kristianna Loken; Costas Mandylor; Brian Thompson; Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa; and Matthias Hues.

Oh, and the "rest of cast" bit lists Laila Ali; Chamillionaire; George Cheung; Louis Mandylor; Simon Rhee; and Dan Severn. Can you imagine a cast with this much star power?

Well, you're going to have to imagine it, because I'm at least 75% certain it's a tax dodge or something else a little dodgy. Neither hide nor hair of this instant classic has come to light, although there is a trailer, which I'm kind of expecting to be the only footage they ever shot:

The same group of people, years earlier, made something called "Blizhniy Boy", allegedly starring Bolo Yeung ten years after he'd stopped being in movies, which is similarly impossible to actually see, has no reviews, etc.

FAKE EDIT: People claim to have actually seen "Beyond The Game"! Maybe there's hope for me yet! Here's one of the tiny handful of Letterboxd reviews (there are zero on IMDB):

This is the fucking It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of B-action movie stars.
The plot is absolute nonsense, the movie is cobbled together from footage from an unreleased film by the same director called Lost Warrior: Left Behind, and I'm pretty sure most of the dialogue was ad libbed. As far as I know, the only way to even see it is to order a Japanese dvd of the flick off of Amazon Japan.
It's one of the best things I've ever watched.

[Shit Good Nose]

Another one which got me trying to track it down, emailing production companies and all sorts - 2016's "Beyond The Game". Check out this cast list of B-movie legends:

Eric Roberts; Danny Trejo; Michael Madsen, Olivier Gruner; Mark Dacascos; Lorenzo Lamas; Michael Jai White; Kelly Hu; Cynthia Rothrock; Kevin Sorbo; Casper Van Dien; Don "The Dragon" Wilson; Tony Todd; Billy Zane; Bai Ling; James Lew; Martin Kove; Armand Assante; Tom "Tiny" Lister; Kristianna Loken; Costas Mandylor; Brian Thompson; Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa; and Matthias Hues.

Oh, and the "rest of cast" bit lists Laila Ali; Chamillionaire; George Cheung; Louis Mandylor; Simon Rhee; and Dan Severn. Can you imagine a cast with this much star power?

Well, you're going to have to imagine it, because I'm at least 75% certain it's a tax dodge or something else a little dodgy. Neither hide nor hair of this instant classic has come to light, although there is a trailer, which I'm kind of expecting to be the only footage they ever shot:

The same group of people, years earlier, made something called "Blizhniy Boy", allegedly starring Bolo Yeung ten years after he'd stopped being in movies, which is similarly impossible to actually see, has no reviews, etc.

FAKE EDIT: People claim to have actually seen "Beyond The Game"! Maybe there's hope for me yet! Here's one of the tiny handful of Letterboxd reviews (there are zero on IMDB):

Allegedly (I feel the need to stress "allegedly" - it says things like "coming soon" and "post production", but you can still add it to the shopping cart) available on DVD from dvdplanetstore.pk.  I have no idea how legit dvdplanetstore is, but for quite a while it was the only place where you could get an English friendly copy of Gangs Of Wasseypur shipped to the UK for not totally outrageous money.

[George White]

Michael Flatley's Blackbird is still unreleased after its premiere at the Monte Carlo Streaming Festival (no, me neither).

[Famous Mortimer]

Michael Flatley's Blackbird is still unreleased after its premiere at the Monte Carlo Streaming Festival (no, me neither).

I really want to see this - we had a nice chat about it here.

Oh, and here - I did a quick Google and there's not been a single mention of it since the early July stuff about it kind of maybe being shown at a "film festival" in Monaco, only one where the streaming part of it mysteriously didn't work. If anyone who was involved in the making of Blackbird has a copy and happens to be reading this thread, please let me watch it.

[George White]

THe Irish film fan community are on your side, buddy.