I chuckled earlier when I read about the flickering flame of hope kept alive by Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas, who insists that the property could be resurrected as a feature film on a semi-regular basis. He's not the only one who regularly flogs a filmic pipe dream, though. Here are 9 projects in perpetual development that film bloggers love to write about, but will probably never get a greenlight:
· The Veronica Mars movie
· The Gilmore Girls movie
We adore EW's Michael Ausiello and his love for Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls knows no bounds, but no matter how much he carries water for big-screen versions of both, they ain't gonna happen. The former was snuffed out due to low ratings, then got no farther than a Rob Thomas pitch in the feature world. It's not likely to be resurrected now, out of nowhere, no matter how many romcoms Kristen Bell makes. As for Gilmore, the principal players are all busy, and the TV movie continuation that would be the show's most logical progression is a format that's run out of steam. The closest this property will ever get to the big screen is when Emma Roberts plays Lorelai Gilmore in 2025's Gilmore Girls 3-D.
· Steven Spielberg's Lincoln
Much to the chagrin of Jeff Wells, Steven Spielberg has been intending to make an Abraham Lincoln biopic for the last decade, all to no avail. Some of the best screenwriters in Hollywood have taken cracks at the material, from John Logan to Tony Kushner, and Spielberg's reticence to commit suggests the story is less "passion project" than "something he has no take on." At this point, star Liam Neeson is officially older than Lincoln was at the time of his assassination. If Spielberg really wanted to make Lincoln, he would have done it by now.
· True Lies 2
Sometimes, Tom Arnold is interviewed by a major outlet, and he's asked, "So, what are you working on next?" He knows better than to say, "Well I just did a web short, and I think I might be appearing at a veterinary fundraiser in Jersey next week opposite Jon Gosselin and Tila Tequila." Instead, Arnold reliably claims that True Lies 2 is on the docket, despite the fact that director James Cameron appears to be planning two sequels to Avatar, which could easily take up the better part of a decade. Don't stop believin', Tom.
· Martin Scorsese's Sinatra movie
Since it was announced that Martin Scorsese might tackle a Frank Sinatra biopic, pundits have been so caught up in fantasy-casting the Rat Pack that they failed to notice the wind that's gone out of the project's sails. "It's very hard because here is a man who changed the entire image of the Italian-American," a defeated-sounding Scorsese said last month. "And that's just one thing. Along with his political work, civil rights, the Mob...we can't go through the greatest hits of Sinatra's life. We tried this already. Just can't do it." Complicating matters further is that if Scorsese really wants to tackle Sinatra's mob ties, he'll have to through daughter Tina Sinatra first.
· Unbreakable 2
M. Night Shyamalan's 2000 film Unbreakable was optimistically conceived as the first of a trilogy, then it failed to break $100 million domestic. Nevertheless, he's often asked whether he might make the other two films. That deeply unlikely possibility is complicated by countless factors: Shyamalan's rift with Disney, the studio's flat desire to nip the trilogy in the bud, and a new trilogy that Shyamalan hopes to get underway with The Last Airbender. Unbreakable 2 has already been knee-capped, kids.
· The Brazilian Job
· The Topkapi Affair
The recent remakes of The Italian Job and The Thomas Crown Affair were tidy little heist films that experienced enough sleeper success to spawn sequel talks. Since then, though, there's been no movement. When I talked to F. Gary Gray about an Italian sequel last month, he sounded ambivalent and more interested in other things. When I talked to Pierce Brosnan about a Thomas Crown follow-up two weeks ago, I thought he would fall asleep in mid-reply. It may be time to put these two to bed.
· The Arrested Development movie
When I told my colleague Stu that I would be writing this post, he suggested that I include the long-awaited Arrested Development movie in the list. Oh, how it stung! And yet, I can't say that he's wrong, as creator/writer/director Mitchell Hurwitz almost seems to be taking on additional projects specifically so he won't have any time to finish an Arrested script. When his animated sitcom Sit Down Shut Up was canceled, it seemed like the perfect time to finish the screenplay and make the spring due date that the cast was murmuring about. Instead, Hurwitz began work on the sure-to-go-to-series Fox pilot Will Arnett sitcom Wilde Kingdom. It may be easier to assume this film will never happen. At the very least, it will be less painful if we begin it now.