10 Unmade John Landis Movies That Could've Been Great

Summary

Landis had numerous unmade films, with many ending up in the hands of other directors. Missed opportunities for unique and exciting projects.
Landis was set to work on a Parisian horror film, a vampire romp in Vegas, a missionary comedy, and even a collaboration with horror giants.
A fascinating look at Landis’s potential projects that never made it to the big screen, leaving fans wondering what could have been.

Known for directing films such as The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, and many more, John Landis’ success cannot be overstated. That said, there were still several movies he’d intended to make that never quite took off. From unmade Bond films to scrapped original stories to movies that would eventually be made by other directors, Landis reckons that for every film he’s made, another 12 never got produced. Some of them sound pretty good.

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It’s a real shame that audiences never got to experience what could have been. While many of his unmade movies ended up being taken over by another director, imagining what Landis’s style and tone would have done for something like Little Shop of Horrors casts such a perfect picture. It’s difficult not to feel a little disappointed that these projects never made it off the ground, but thankfully there’s enough information out there to help paint an image of what the John Landis movies would have been like.

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10 Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Steven Spielberg Ended Up In Charge Of The Film

Originally titled Project Bluebook, Steven Spielberg’s 1977 groundbreaking sci-fi Close Encounters of the Third Kind nearly went down a very different path. Producers Julia and Michael Phillips reached out to Landis to request rewrites on Paul Schrader’s original script.

After being flown out to meet the producers – and Spielberg himself – Landis was disappointed by the chaotic nature of everything.

Schrader (along with several other writers) would end up uncredited for their work, the sole writer named on-screen being Spielberg himself. However, Landis never actually got round to making his rewrites. After being flown out to meet the producers – and Spielberg himself – Landis was disappointed by the chaotic nature of everything.

Spielberg was in the middle of making Jaws, Landis felt that Close Encounters should have been a smaller-budget affair and that things were becoming overcomplicated, and ultimately he swiftly left the project. Sadly, not much is known about what direction Landis would have taken the movie in, but given his other genre work it probably would have been great.

9 A Parisian Horror Movie

He Stepped Down From The Project

Back in 2011, Landis was a fair way down the route to making a monster horror film set in Paris, and co-written with French producer Alexandre Gavras. The film had been cast with actors who were bilingual, as the film was – uniquely – set to be produced both in French and in English, in order to appeal to both markets of moviegoers.

No title was ever given to the project, but Landis had confirmed that it was going to be a proper return to the monster horror genre for him. Unfortunately, things were not to be. After showing the script to the French production team, Landis was met with criticism, and requests for changes that he felt wouldn’t suit the film.

In the end, he graciously returned the fee he’d been paid to write the screenplay and stepped down from the project. Little else is known about this oddity, but it would have been interesting to see Landis’s own take on a Parisian horror film.

8 Red Sleep

The Basic Premise Was Vampires In Vegas

Having successfully set the benchmark for the werewolf film, it only made sense that Landis wanted to have a crack at a classic vampire romp as well. Thus, Mick Garris and Richard Matheson’s script for Red Sleep was born. Warner Bros. had signed Landis onto the film to direct, and he and Harry Shearer had rewritten the script before the deal fell apart and the movie never went into production. The basic premise was: Vampires in Vegas.

Vampires would have been running Las Vegas, with no windows in any of the casinos and the main headliner of the strip was to be the Duke of the Dark – an amalgamation of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and the many other kings of Vegas who have existed throughout the city’s rich history. He was the king of the vampires as well as the city, and the vampires would have fed off the many tourists who travel through the desert to visit the casinos and experience the nightlife. Oh, what could have been.

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7 Dick Tracy

Landis’ Idea Was For Clint Eastwood To Star In The Movie

The production of 1990 comic-book adaptation Dick Tracy was a troubled one, having begun life as a pitch in the early ‘80s. The project had an unusually high turnover of directors, burning through Steven Spielberg, Walter Hill, Richard Benjamin, and – of course – John Landis, before settling on producer and star Warren Beatty (whom Landis has claimed he hired himself).

What’s worse is that Landis’s intention was for Clint Eastwood to star as the detective. Yes, really. PolyGram Pictures (the company which produced American Werewolf) had become attached to Dick Tracy at one point, with Landis set to write the feature as well as direct.

It’s unclear whether Eastwood declined the role or whether events became complicated by Landis’s indictment in 1983, but at some point, Eastwood dropped out, and Landis was forced to withdraw – but not before ensuring Beatty was on course to play the titular role.

6 Missionary Impossible

The Story Of A Criminal Disguised As A Christian Missionary

In the mid-2000s, Landis was signed on for a project called – depending on who was asked at the time – either Missionary Impossible or The Missionary Position. The script had been penned by Glen Brackenridge and Curtis Brien (although Landis was hoping to make some changes in a director’s rewrite).

The movie was to tell the story of a hardened criminal whose method of evading the cops was to disguise as a Christian missionary. Landis has said that the film would have been very funny (and rude). The comedy would have arisen from the criminal’s brush with Christianity leading him to have a total re-evaluation of his life after falling into the faith more than he’d originally expected.

Landis wanted the movie to have been contemporary, relevant, and timely, and given his previous comedy works, it seems like that probably would have been the case.

Landis wanted the movie to have been contemporary, relevant, and timely, and given his previous comedy works, it seems like that probably would have been the case. With a great idea at its core, this production was set to be something special – it’s a real shame that it was never produced.

5 The Bone Orchard

A Western Mixed With A Vampire Flick

Just as An American Werewolf in London is a mash-up of comedy and horror, The Bone Orchard was set to be another genre blend – this time, a western mixed with a vampire flick. With a script from M. D. Presley, this movie was going to have a bizarre focus on a pair of sibling gunslingers from the Texas of the Old West as Chinese railroad workers summoned an ancient vampire to take revenge on the Americans for mistreating the immigrant workers.

While on the surface this sounds like it could have been a controversial production, Presley was keen to adapt the vampire mythology from the being centered on the west to showcase a different side to the mythological murderers.

The script was ready to go, and there were apparently some big-name stars attached (including Mila Kunis) – but for some reason, this project never made it to filming. By all accounts, the script for the movie was promising, and hopefully it will be published one day for fans to enjoy.

4 A Legendary Team-Up Horror Anthology

Four Of The Biggest Names In Hollywood Horror

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John Landis. Guillermo del Toro. Sam Raimi. Joe Dante. Four of the biggest names in Hollywood horror – and there was very nearly a collaboration between them. Landis had the idea for an anthology horror film with each of the four legendary filmmakers producing their own narrative, which would have been weaved together into a single feature. There’s very little information available about this collaboration, but it certainly would have been a big one.

The creators of Gremlins, The Evil Dead, and the man who brought Hellboy to the screen teaming up with Landis to bring four new stories to the screen (presumably in the same fashion as the Landis-produced Twilight Zone: The Movie) would have been something incredible to behold for horror fans, and it’s a real shame that the idea appears to have fizzled out fairly early on in the process. Fans can only hope that more information on this project will eventually surface.

3 An American Werewolf In London 2

The Producer Didn’t Like The Script

Landis’s 1981 classic An American Werewolf in London is one of the most famous horror films of all time, with its glorious effects, chilling atmosphere, and unsettling tone throughout. It’s frightening, funny, gory, and clever, and so a sequel would have seemed like an obvious no-brainer, worth it for another American Werewolf in London transformation scene alone.

Unfortunately, 1997’s An American Werewolf in Paris featured none of the same cast or crew and completely failed to capture the thrill of the original. Frustratingly, things nearly didn’t go that way – Landis had been asked to make an American Werewolf in London sequel back in 1991 which would have included all the characters from the first movie (even the dead ones!) and followed Debbie Klein, who David and Jack talk about at the start of the original film.

With more blood and gore mixed in with a healthy dose of wacky comedy, this sequel would undoubtedly have been a success – unfortunately, though, the producer didn’t like the script and so it went nowhere.

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2 Barnum

The Story Of The Creator Of The American Circus Industry

Decades before The Greatest Showman, Landis was set to direct a project starring John Belushi as P. T. Barnum, the originator of the American circus industry. Landis’s movie would have focused on the disparity between Barnum having been a genius at marketing and showmanship while also being a sleazy charlatan.

The script was written by Bill Lancaster and told a lot of true stories about Barnum’s talent for advertising that was almost akin to that of a conman. One such story was when Barnum ran out of water to make the lemonade sold outside his shows, so instructed his people to use the pink water they’d been using to dye clothes.

Barnum advertised this at a higher price as pink lemonade from Paris. According to Landis, Belushi had been screen tested and seemed like a good fit for the character. Keen to portray both sides of Barnum’s legacy (the man who pretended to die early so that he could read his obituaries in advance), this would undoubtedly have been a more true-to-reality portrayal of Barnum’s life.

1 The Spy Who Loved Me

007 Would Go On A Mission To Save The Pope

John Landis plus James Bond. It seems like a match made in heaven, especially given that this was Roger Moore’s take on 007 – a Bond so concerned with exaggerating and accentuating the characterization that he often came across as cartoonish and borderline parodic. These are the exact reasons why Landis’s script – in which 007 was to go on a mission to save the Pope himself from being kidnapped in some unspecified Latin American country – would have been sheer perfection.

It’s all so easy to visualize – Bond, affable, ever-winking to camera, a spring in his step, wearing a half-unbuttoned shirt, jacket slung over his shoulder, as he practically waltzes through the Brazilian-Mexican landscape tailing the Pope’s parade, all of a sudden catches a brief glimpse of a reflection from a nearby mountain. Danger. Landis’s flair for comedy combined with Moore’s total inability to play it straight even when he tries makes the fact that the John Landis version of the film never came to fruition truly disappointing.

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