Cancelled films

Cancelled Films refer to films that either weren't made, had a lack of interest, had too much of a big budget, or the studio decided to cancel them. Even when films are cancelled, they sometimes spark interest in what the cancelled film could have been and what impact it could have if it was made. For more, visit mh:cancelledmovies:Cancelled Movies Wiki.

Rules for posting examples on this page

 * 1) Don't add films currently in production or haven't been explicitly said to be cancelled by either the studio or the filmmakers.
 * 2) Don't add in examples of films in development hell because there is still potential that it could be made.
 * 3) If there is a summary for a cancelled film on the internet, please shorten it and don't directly copy summaries from other websites; in other words, use your own words.
 * 4) Please state the reasons for why the film was cancelled.
 * 5) The cancelled films in question don't necessarily have to be bad ideas; cancelled films with good ideas are allowed here.

Examples

 * 1) Spider-Man 4 and Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon project are two of the most famous examples.
 * 2) Back in 2004, there were disputes between then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner and then-Pixar CEO Steve Jobs over Disney's copyright to Pixar's characters and stories. It got to the point that Pixar was willing to leave Disney and find a new distributor for their films (which they never did). Eisner, still having the right to create sequels to Pixar's films without their consent, was furious at this and decided to set up a new animation studio called Circle 7 Animation to create them. However, Circle 7 never made any feature films during its 3 years of operation and the only two films that had a script and some artwork made for it were their own version of mh:greatestmovies:Toy Story 3 and Monsters, Inc. 2: Lost in Scaradise (a mh:greatestmovies:Finding Nemo sequel was planned but never had a script or official art for it). The studio was forced out of operation in 2007 when Disney acquired Pixar after CEO Michael Eisner resigned in 2005 and was replaced with Bob Iger who resolved issues between the two companies by giving Pixar the right to their characters and creating stories back. The planned sequels were eventually made by Pixar themselves (with the exception of mh:greatestmovies:Monsters, Inc., which received a prequel called mh:greatestmovies:Monsters University in 2013) with their version of Toy Story 3 being released in 2010 and Finding Nemo receiving a sequel called mh:greatestmovies:Finding Dory in 2016. But they still sometimes spark curiosity over what they could have originally been.
 * 3) *Toy Story 3 had a different plot compared to the final film as mentioned before. One plot involved Andy and his toys going to visit his grandmother's house because his room is being remodeled. A set of Andy's toys as well as the new characters Hee-Hee and Gladiola (a pair of Sock Monkeys) attempt to figure out who stole the toys one by one in a murder mystery-like story. While rejected, it was impressed by Disney. Another plot idea involved a malfunctioned Buzz Lightyear being shipped to a factory in Taiwan thinking that he could be fixed. However, the toys discovered on the internet that every Buzz Lightyear toy is being malfunctioned to the point of recall which led to the Toys shipping themselves to Taiwan in order to rescue Buzz. Buzz would have met other characters like Daxx Blastar, Comet, Rosey, and Jade.
 * 4) *Monsters, Inc. 2: Lost in Scaradise was going to have Mike and Sully visiting the human world to give Boo a present only to find out that she moved. While trapped in the human world, Mike and Sully would split up after a disagreement.
 * 5) *The original version of Finding Nemo 2 did mention that Marlin got captured and it would have introduced a new character named Remy who is Nemo's long-lost twin brother. Nemo, Remy, and Dory would now have to rescue Marlin.
 * 6) The infamous 1972 Jerry Lewis film The Day the Clown Cried is one of the rare examples where the film was actually completed but never released. Contrary to popular belief, the reason for the film never being released wasn't because the film was thought to be tasteless with the premise of a once world-famous clown being sentenced to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he tries to entertain and save the Jewish children from the camp by comforting them, it was actually due to production troubles that pervaded on the set with several lawsuits between the producers of the film and they're refusing to let the situation go away that is still going on to this day. Jerry Lewis, who once had the enthusiasm for the film soon being released regretted doing this film to the point when he submitted his films (including this one) to film preservation in August 2015, it was decided that the film will finally be released in June 2024. At this point, though, we can only know about this film through watching documentaries about it and behind-the-scenes looks.
 * 7) In the late 1960s, Stanley Kubrick proposed a motion picture called Napoleon, based on the famous French general. He conducted a lot of research on the subject, including watching every film and reading any book related to him. It was canceled when Waterloo, another film related to Napoleon, bombed at the box office. Some of the research ended up in Barry Lyndon.
 * 8) Similarly, in the early 1990s, he proposed a film called Aryan Papers, about two Polish Jews evading arrest from the Nazis. He canceled it when he saw Schindler's List and realized he could not top that film as a definitive Holocaust movie.
 * 9) In 1999, Ghostbusters III: Hellbent was announced by Columbia Pictures, but for many years, it went many production problems throughout the years. Actors Rick Moranis and Bill Murray expressed no interest in reprising their roles and the third sequel was canceled, until they had new plans for a sequel many years later. In 2016, a rebooted film entitled Ghostbusters: Answer The Call was released and received negative reception from audiences and was a box office disaster; leading to the cancellation of the reboot's sequel. On January 15, 2019, Ghostbusters: Afterlife was finally announced by Columbia Pictures and was scheduled to be released on November 19, 2021, effectively killing the reboot franchise.
 * 10) In 1999, around the same time when mh:greatestmovies:Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me came out, Mike Myers, Jack Black, and David Hasselhoff were set to star in a movie based on Myers' character Dieter from the mh:besttvshows:Saturday Night Live sketch Sprockets, which was set to be produced by Brian Grazer and directed by Bo Welch. However, Mike Myers refused a $20 million paycheck due to him finding the script unacceptable despite working on it for over a year and a half. The film was cancelled and Universal started filing lawsuits against Myers for breaking his contract, and he was forced to star in the 2003 film adaptation of Dr Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, which has the same director and producer as the cancelled Dieter movie, to fulfill the contract.
 * 11) In 2019, since after the release of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, the third Lego Movie spinoff, The Billion Brick Race which was originally be made in the same year, and however, this movie was canceled and only the concept art of the film is seen, despite the box office disappointments of both The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and The Lego Ninjago Movie.
 * 12) Ever since Blue Sky Studios shut down, they canceled their recent film that was in development called Nimona which was based on Noelle Stevenson's novel and would've been Blue Sky's first LGBT film. Speaking of Blue Sky, other films were also in development in the studio and were also scrapped even before Blue Sky was shutting down like an adaptation of Mutts, Foster, an adaptation of Anubis, an adaptation of Frogkisser, an adaptation of Spore, and Santa Calls. However, Netflix acquired the rights to make Nimona so it's not cancelled anymore. As for Foster, it's confirmed that Walt Disney Animation Studios is set to release the film on 2023 with Carlos López Estrada being the director.
 * 13) After Ratchet & Clank failed at the box office, Rainmaker studios faced the failure of the film which led to a film adaptation of Sly Cooper being canceled. The trailer showed what the characters would've looked like as Sly, Bentley, and Murray had different designs that were completely different from their game counterparts. The film would also use CGI instead of cel-shading and other Sly characters like Carmelita Fox and Clockwerk were already confirmed to appear in the film. Matt Olsen and Chris Murphy were going to reprise their roles as Bentley and Murray while Sly was going to be voiced by Ian James Corlett.
 * 14) When ImageMovers was still working with Disney, Mars Needs Moms was a box office bomb which led to other ImageMovers Digital films being canceled which were Calling All Robots, A remake of The Beatles: Yellow Submarine, A Roger Rabbit sequel, and The Nutcracker. In fact, The Yellow Submarine remake already had some cast members listed in with Dean Lennox Kelly as John Lennon, Peter Serafinowicz as Paul McCartney, Cary Elwes as George Harrison, Adam Campbell as Ringo Starr, and David Tennant as The Blue Meanie Chief being the only ones listed.
 * 15) There were original Pixar films that were canceled that had nothing to do with sequels to existing films. The first one is Monkey which would've been a retelling of a classic Chinese and Japanese tale about a monkey who accompanies a priest on a journey from China to India. It was canceled due to technical limitations.
 * 16) *Then there was a movie called The Yellow Car which would have followed a small yellow electric car who would have lived in a gas-guzzling world and the plot would have been inspired by The Ugly Duckling. It was set to be released after A Bug's Life yet it was scrapped in favor of Toy Story 2. Despite this, some characters in the canceled film got to appear in Cars like Mater, Sarge, Fillmore, Sherrif, and Doc. Humans were also going to appear as suggested in the concept art.
 * 17) *Another one was called Newt which would tell the story of two last remaining male and female blue-footed newts who are forced by science to save the species despite having conflict with each other. It was scrapped because it felt similar to Blue Sky's Rio.
 * 18) Around 2007, it was announced that Spyro the Dragon was getting a movie by The Animation Picture Company. It would've been based on The Legend of Spyro trilogy with the movie being made in Los Angeles with animation done by the South Korean Animation studio called Wonderworld Studios alongside Universal Animation Studios. It was canceled due to Activision wanting to go in a different direction for Spyro.
 * 19) Big Idea had plans to make another VeggieTales film in the form of The Bob and Larry Movie which would've had a short synopsis of talking vegetables in world history like a pharaoh consulting with leek as an example. The main plot would've been about how Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber met and got their own show. Bob would have worked on a local TV news segment called Farm Report while Larry would work at a factory. The film even included humans. The film was canceled due to Big Idea going bankrupt in mid-2003 and the box office report of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie. A new VeggieTales film is greenlit, but Phil Vischer said that it was not The Bob and Larry Movie. Another fact of the film's cancelation is because how tough it is for the studio to animate the human characters.
 * 20) There were plans to release the documentary called Bill Cosby 77. It was never released on Netflix because of Bill Cosby doing bad things which caused the documentary to be unreleased on Netflix.
 * 21) Before Space Jam: A New Legacy came to existence, there were other Space Jam related films that were intended to be made.
 * 22) *The original version of Space Jam 2 was going to be a sequel to the original film, and it would've let the Looney Tunes face a new villain named Berserk-O! in a new Basketball competition. It was cancelled as Michael Jordan didn't want to appear. Mel Brooks was intended to voice Berserk-O!.
 * 23) *Skate Jam was going to feature Tony Hawk. It was canceled for Looney Tunes: Back in Action with the said film being a box office bomb.
 * 24) *Race Jam was going to feature Jeff Gordon. It was also canceled as well due to Back in Action.
 * 25) *Spy Jam was going to feature Jackie Chan, but it became Back in Action instead.
 * 26) *There were even talks for a golf film with Tiger Woods being the focus. It was canceled as well due to Back in Action.
 * 27) *After Space Jam: A New Legacy released, they even have plans for a third film based on wrestling, but it may end up being cancelled as well due to A New Legacy barely making its budget back in the box office, and its critical failure.
 * 28) Before the Super Mario Bros. film was released, there were plans on a different Mario film that was drastically separate to the final film. The film would've been more faithful to the games only it would take inspiration from The Labyrinth 1986, The NeverEnding Story, The Wizard of Oz, and The Princess Bride. It was going to be directed by Greg Beeman and written by Jim Jennewein and Tom S. Parker. Danny Devito or Dustin Hoffman was intended to play as Mario while Tom Hanks was intended to play as Luigi. Meg Ryan or Winona Ryder was going to play as Princess Toadstool (now known as Peach in later Mario games) and Arnold Schwarzenegger intended to play as King Koopa (now known as Bowser). It was canceled due to budget issues. Keep in mind the final draft didn't even include Peach, but rather, Daisy, who only appeared in Super Mario Land at the time.
 * 29) Like what happened with ImageMovers Digital, Imagi Animation Studios shut down due to Astro Boy bombing at the box office. Because of this, the films that were canceled were an adaptation of Gatchaman, an adaptation of Tetsujin 28-go, Cat Tale, and Tusker. There was also another film that got canceled before Imagi Animation Studios shut down which happens to be an adaptation of The Legend of Zelda. The reason the Zelda film got canceled was that Nintendo didn't like the idea due to the memories of the live-action Super Mario Bros. film, however, if the new Mario movie by Illumination succeeds both financially and critically, Nintendo may actually try their hand at an animated Zelda movie again in the future.
 * 30) In 2015, it was announced a Nicktoons live-action animated crossover film, with Jared Hess as the director, the script being written by Hess and his wife, Jarshua and was going be produced by Mary Parent and Cale Boyter, but in reality, the film was not going to be made, despite its announcement.
 * 31) A movie based on the Klonoa video game series was going to be made by Henshin. Hideo Yoshizawa joined the project as executive producer while Ash Paulsen of GameXplain was also joined in as an associate producer. Hideo said that the film was canceled on January 4, 2019.
 * 32) Many films that Universal and Illumination were planning to do never got into cinemas.
 * 33) *There were plans for more live-action projects including Curious George, Where's Waldo, Pluto, and Clifford the Big Red Dog. These projects never came to be likely because of the critical failure of HOP, however, Paramount took over production of the live action Clifford the Big Red Dog movie and released it in 2021.
 * 34) *Animated projects are not safe from this as well as there was going to be an animated Cat in the Hat movie, yet it was canceled likely because of the mixed reception of The Lorax and The Grinch, and how its 2003 live action counterpart turned out. We were also getting an animated Woody Woodpecker movie, a stop motion Addams Family movie, and an Uglydolls movie that ended up being done differently compared to what Illumination had in mind. Other abandoned projects include Flanimals, an untitled Cryptozoology movie, and Johnny Express.
 * 35) Certain Disney animated films not related to Pixar were intended to be made yet never saw the light of day.
 * 36) *Wild Life was originally going to be about an elephant who becomes a sensation on the New York club circuit. It was canceled due to the adult humor according to Roy E. Disney.
 * 37) *an animated adaptation of Don Quitoxe was going to be made by Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi who aimed for a more adult take. But it was never improved.
 * 38) *My Peoples would have been about two rival families in Appalachia during the late 1940s despite two family members falling in love with each other. It would also have a group of mountain spirits who happen to be folk art dolls as the characters who attempt to bring the family together. It would have combined CGI and hand-drawn animation with Barry Cook being the director. The voice cast consisted of people like Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, Hal Holbrook, and Charles Durning. The movie was canceled in favor of Chicken Little.
 * 39) *An adaptation of Three Little Pigs was going to mix 2D and 3D animation, yet it was scrapped for unknown reasons.
 * 40) *Fantasia 2006 was going to be a sequel to Fantasia 2000 which would have featured new segments. It was abandoned for unknown reasons, but the short films One by One, Lorenzo, and The Little Match Girl were released separately as they were intended to be in the canceled film.
 * 41) *Disney had intentions of adapting Mort by Terry Pratchett with John Musker and Ron Clements attached to direct. The project was canceled because Disney could not afford the rights to the film.
 * 42) *King of the Elves was based on a short story by Philip K. Dick with Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker. It was canceled because Chris Williams was set to direct the film due to the former two not being involved. The second time it got canceled was due to Chris directing Big Hero 6.
 * 43) *Gigantic was going to be based on Jack and the Beanstalk and would have been about Jack being friends with a female giant. It was replaced by Raya and the Last Dragon.
 * 44) An adaptation of Hanazuki: Full of Treasures was said to be in development by Paramount Pictures, but the plans were cancelled or shelved due to contributing factors such as Hasbro laying off 10% of its employees following the Toys R Us bankruptcy, Their acquisitions of the Saban Brands and Entertainment One assets and the cut-down of Hanazuki's second season with only eight episodes.
 * 45) Believe it or not, DreamWorks intended to work on an animated film based on the Plants vs. Zombies series of video games. The cancelation is unknown yet concept art was released.
 * 46) The infamous 2003/04 The Cat in the Hat movie was originally going to get a sequel called The Cat in the Hat Comes Back which would have been based on the book of the same name. It was canceled due to the film's bad reception.
 * 47) Flamingos Forever was originally intended to be the mid-to-late 1980s sequel to John Waters' Pink Flamingos (originally released in 1972). While Troma Entertainment offered to finance the film at $600,000, there were other factors that led to Waters cancelling the movie. Hollywood directors badgered Waters into revising the script; Divine wanted to focus more on serious male roles (like Trouble in Mind for example); and the 1984 death of Edith Massey. However, the script is still available in Waters' 1988 book Trash Trio, which also includes the screenplay to Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living.
 * 48) Pac-Man has been through various attempts to get a feature film. It has been planned since the game's popularity. Following the release of Ms. Pac-Man, a feature film for it was being developed yet it never reached an agreement. Since 2008, a live-action film was in development by Crystal Sky Pictures but there is no updates since then.
 * 49) A biopic based on John Belushi's life was in the works around the mid-2010s with Emile Hirsch in the starring role, but it was scrapped for unknown reasons.
 * 50) Jim Davis wanted to make a feature-length Garfield movie called Garfield's Judgement Day which would have been much darker than the source material and the story would have been about a storm threatening to hit the town and Garfield proposing that the pets break their taboo of talking to humans to warn them. Sadly, no animation studio was willing to animate it. Davis tried rewriting it as a special, before eventually giving up and releasing it as a stand alone book.
 * 51) Before Sonic the Hedgehog got a film in 2020, there were several attempts to make a film for the blue blur
 * 52) *One film was an adaptation of DIC's Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. It never came to exist because Tom Kalinske (Sega of America CEO) was wary of the film due to the critical failures of Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter films which are bad films based on video games.
 * 53) *Another one would have been one called Sonic: Wonders of the World which would have been about a 12-year-old who finds an invention called the XRI which is an artificial intelligence computer that uses a system of holographic memory. Josh touches it anyway and asks it to write his paper on Sonic, the test pilot. However, XRI doesn't recognize the name, so Josh instead plugs in a Sega Saturn and a copy of Sonic X-Treme. When Josh uses the controller, however, Sonic (the hedgehog) stops moving and gets a mind of his own. Suddenly, Sonic jumps right out of the screen and into the real world. Dr. Robotnik was going to appear too. It was canceled because of creative differences.
 * 54) *Ben Hurst wanted DIC to make an animated film to be a continuation of the animated Sonic the Hedgehog series (aka Sonic SatAM). Ken Penders then came in and alter the plans. He made a new concept called Sonic Armageddon which would have been an origin story and a series reset thus resolving the plot threats which began in the animated Sonic show and continued in the Archie's comic series. It was canceled due to the death of Robert Leffler who supported Ken and the corporate upheaval.
 * 55) *Ken also wanted to make an animated film about Knuckles which would be based on the Sonic comics. It was also canceled.
 * 56) A 3D CGI animated film called The Works was going to be the first film made in CGI and had contributions from individuals who would go on and work at Pixar and DreamWorks. The film was developed by the staff of the Computer Graphics Lab in association with the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York. The name was inspired by the original meaning of the word "robot", derived from "robota" ("work"), a word found in many Slavic languages. It was set in the future where a malfunctioning computer triggered a last World War but it repopulates the entire planet with robots. It would have focused on a pilot named T-Square (not to be confused with the Japanese jazz fusion band) and a robot named Ipso Facto and the former would go to Earth to return humanity. It was canceled due to production difficulties and lack of interest.