The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made

Book review
Written by David Hughes
Titan Books paperback
Release date Out now

The convoluted stories behind the SF epics we’ll never get to see…

This fascinating tome charts the tortured history behind many great unproduced pictures, but if I had to pick just one to get the instant greenlight it would be David Lynch’s Ronnie Rocket. This particular movie-that-nearly-was tells the story of its titular red-haired character – a surgically altered creature with the power to conduct electricity. The film was to feature such unusual sights as a gang of sinister ‘Donut Men’ who would spontaneously combust if anyone informed them their shoelaces were untied and a method of defeating villains by standing on one leg. Perhaps inevitably, the movie was to end with Ronnie Rocket turning into a giant egg. Even by Lynch’s standards this would have been an irresistibly odd movie.

Other readers will probably have their own favourites, as this book tells the story of a long list of wondrous movies that may or may not eventually see the light of day in some form. Hughes runs through the troubled stories behind Spielberg’s unproduced alien invasion epic Night Skies (which eventually provided the raw material for E.T. and Poltergeist) and the various attempts to get Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End to the screen, and he also looks at how movies that were eventually made could have ended up so differently. Would Alejandro Jodorowsky and Dan O’Bannon’s three-hour take on Dune have been any more successful than the Lynch version? Would a Paul Greengrass-directed Watchmen have been as cool as it sounds? Would Star Trek IV have benefited from co-starring Eddie Murphy?

The meticulously researched stories behind these titles and others are backed up by interviews with those who saw their creative visions utterly crushed, and the book provides a telling insight into the tortuous machinations of the Hollywood studio system. This is a welcome revision of Hughes’s 2000 edition, and the author brings things up to date with all the latest developments. Since the original book I Am Legend, Thunderbirds and Alien Vs. Predator have all hit the big screen; the fact that none of them have been much cop suggests that sometimes great ideas are much better on paper. Matt McAllister