10 OF THE BEST
Dropped off the schedule…
…unreleased movies. Including Don’s Plum, with DiCaprio and Maguire.
THE SEA OF TREES
Premiering at 2015’s Cannes Film Festival, Gus Van Sant’s misjudged drama about Japan’s infamous ‘suicide forest’, starring Matthew McConaughey, was booed by critics. “Dramatically stillborn and commercially unpromising,” said Variety.
HIPPIE HIPPIE SHAKE
A Working Title biopic about the founders of ’60s mag Oz, with Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Chris O’Dowd? Sounds a winner. But director Beeban Kidron walked, those depicted in it slagged it off and it had poor test screenings.
CAGEFIGHTER
Derek Blue Valentine Cianfrance’s documentary about cage fighters wrapped in 2007, but a lack of legal release forms meant that those featured in the film couldn’t be shown on screen. Which is… erm, kinda required for a movie. Shelved indefinitely.
THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED
Jerry Lewis’ poor-taste ‘clown in the Holocaust’ drama filmed in 1972, but has never seen the light of day. Not least because it depicts Lewis’ japester leading children POWs to the gas chambers. Even Lewis himself vowed “you will never see it”.
DON’S PLUM
Set over one night and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, this 2001 black-andwhite indie only made it as far as a premiere in Berlin that year, then a rogue streaming in 2014 on website freedonsplum. com – which DiCaprio and Maguire had shut down.
EMPIRES OF THE DEEP
This underwater mermaid fantasy starring Olga Kurylenko was ridiculed for the fish fights with warriors riding sharks and crabs in its 2012 trailer. It was quietly shunted from the schedule, but after Aquaman, might find an audience…
BLACK WATER TRANSIT
Tony Kaye (American History X) directed this post-Katrina crime drama starring Stephen Dorff, Karl Urban and Laurence Fishburne, but hit trouble when the production company went bust. Subsequent legal issues have prevented its release.
COCKSUCKER BLUES
Robert Frank’s doc charting the the Rolling Stones 1972 US tour featured so much sex and drugs that the band disavowed it – leading to a court ruling allowing the film to only be shown four times a year and only in the presence of Frank.
I SPIT ON YOUR RAVE
Noel Fielding’s king of the zombies starts a music festival for the brain-munching.
It was planned for release in 2010, but delayed when E4 announced in 2012 that it would instead be made into a six-part TV show. Still waiting.
IN GOD’S HANDS
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard met on this Lodge Kerrigan pic, but their efforts were scrapped in 2002. “In God’s Hands suffered irreversible negative damages. That’s the party line on that one,” Sarsgaard said cryptically of his and his now-wife’s flick. JC