Forget About Trying To See These Never-Made Movies
We’re only a few weeks into 1996, and already the studios are pumping out reams of publicity on their movies for the next 12 months. They want you to get all tingly about Tom Cruise and “Mission Impossible” and Arnold’s action flick “Eraser” and Demi Moore’s “Striptease” and Julia Roberts’ “Mary Reilly” and “The Nutty Professor” with Eddie (“I’m still looking for my career”) Murphy.
OK, so we’re all tingly.
But what about the movies that were not made, the movies that somebody pitched and somebody else rejected. These are the real stories of Hollywood. These are the movies we want to hear about. We demand to know why these movies were not made. Here is a list of the movies you will NOT get to see in 1996:
“12 Monkees” - In this documentary, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones add a horn section and go on tour again.
“Waterworld: The Early Years” - Kevin Costner plays the greatgrandfather of the character he played in the original, only this is before water covered the Earth. He plays a frontier marshal who, with his brothers, cleans up the town of Tombstone, Ariz. Hey, I’ve seen this one before.
“Showgirls 2” - This time around, it’s Roseanne who hitchhikes to Vegas to pursue a career as a stripper. But she is picked up by a guy named Tom and … geez, I saw this one, too.
“Natural Born Shleppers” - Oliver Stone directs and Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis star as nasty stand-up comics who really kill in the comedy clubs.
“Forrest Trump” - This really annoying guy, who everybody thinks is an idiot, ends up being fabulously wealthy.
“The Lambshank Redemption” - The tragic story of a cook who feels like a prisoner in his own kitchen.
“Rye Hard With a Vengeance” - A sandwich man at a famous New York City delicatessen takes his job way too seriously. This project was killed because it was too similar to John Travolta’s deli epic, “Get Morty.”
“Mighty Mouse: The Movie” - A fairy tale about a rodent who gets so big he opens his mouth and swallows the entire entertainment industry.
“Reality Bytes” - A real fairy tale about a group of close-knit Generation-X types who stop whining long enough to get jobs in the computer field.
“Robocop 12” - The Al Gore story.
“Toneheads” - A group of classical musicians moves next door to normal people who think the new neighbors are from France.
“Free Hilly” - A very high-ranking government official from Arkansas leads an elaborate commando operation to break his wife out of prison.
“In the Swine of Fire” - The further adventures of Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog, who now works as a firefighter and poses for calenders.
“Jumpy Old Men” - Two elderly gentlemen, who love and hate each other, can’t get any sleep because they live under a flight path.
“Numb and Number” - A retelling of the classic story of what happened when Jim Carrey’s agent told the studio that the comedy star wanted $20 million for his next movie.