Underexposed!: The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made by Joshua Hull

Underexposed!: The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made Reviews

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  🐴 🍖

  indisputably fascinating topic gets let down a bit by fuzziness w/r/t audience (who is this theoretical film buff that salivates over a never-filmed david lynch comedy but needs a synopsis of clockwork orange?), insupportable assertions ("war is an odd topic for comedy" [??]), and a fixation on box office receipts
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  Nick Pratt

  A cool coffee table book that will certainly attract folks at your house. Problem with this book is that every film that didn’t get made is usually for the same reason, which gets about a brief paragraph or two of mentioning. Sections of the unmade films get a historical approach in a sense that the author gives you an IMDB/ Wikipedia filmography rundown of the director attached to said unmade films. And those sections are robust which is quite disappointing. The artwork for the films not made are more often than not more interesting than anything else. Still a fun read though.
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  Andrew Shaffer

  A fun coffee table book.
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  Leon

  A lot of filler, but a fun enough diversion. Some of the posters were neat. Tales From Development Hell explores this topic a lot more substantively.
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  Joe Kucharski

  The road to making movies is a ridiculously absurd one. Half art form, half business investment, all headache. When a director and a producer and heaven-forbid a writer all manage to get their vision created? Man, there is the potential for true magic. But when said forces are bent on pulling everything apart and abandoning the idea like an underfed extra on some backlot alley? Well… there still might be a story to tell.
  
  These are the stories that Josh Hull complies in Underexposed: The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made. Within, Hull plays the dual role of archaeologist and investigator and tells the tales of stopped projects by such A-listers as Guillermo del Toro, David Fincher, John Carpenter, Joel Schumacher, Tim Burton, and Martin Scorsese.
  
  Along for the ride is the artist collective PosterSpy who provide cinema-worthy artwork that imagines the movie-that-never-was. Their style brings authenticity to what is, in most instances, vaporware.
  
  Hull introduces each piece, provides background on the filmmaker or, in many instances, the IP brand (be it Aliens or Nightmare on Elm Street or Justice League or…). He then breaks down, or surmises, what went wrong. All the while he does so with a biting touch of humor and a few well-placed nods and winks for his film geek audience. (In one instance, Hull nicely substitutes “Oscar Isaac” with “Poe Dameron” with absolutely no explanation required.)
  
  Some of his subject matter is well-versed lore. Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness; Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5 featuring the return of Ripley; George Miller’s already-cast Justice League; Kevin Smith’s Fletch revival. Others were incredible little treats that sound delightful yet remain bittersweet knowing they were not to be. Among these gems that will never get the chance to shine are John Carpenter’s Shadow Company featuring Kurt Russell fighting off zombie Vietnam vets; David Fincher’s Elliott Ness project starring Matt Damon; Ridley Scott’s take on I Am Legend with Arnold Schwarzenegger; John Hughes’ would-be-Gen X classic-in-the-making pairing up Ferris Bueller with Claire Standish in Oil and Vinegar; songwriter Nick Cave’s travel-through-time sequel to Gladiator; and, uh, Batman vs. Godzilla.
  
  Hull provides info on each and every effort but the end result most times leaves the reader wanting more. Not only for the finished project but also for additional info on said failures. Underexposed! is a fast read but that does not mean it should be a light one. There is the understanding that deep details perhaps do not exist but quite a few of the entries read as if cut short. These absences become more annoying than regretful.
  
  Making movies is a business, a fact that Hull is most aware of. He posts a subtle through line with many of these cast-off projects stating that reason for relegation was the result of other box office failures. For instance, the box office tally for Prometheus, although positive, was not near the stellar expectations. Coupled along with Blomkamp’s Chappie totally bombing, Alien 5 was written off. Assuredly, genre fans would much rather have seen Sigourney Weaver reprising her role while also wearing xenomorph armor as opposed to Hugh Jackman sparring with yet another robot.
  
  That is the truth of Hollywood. For all the awards and celebrations of style and culture, movies are made to make money. Those ROIs are already spent on infinity pools and Louboutins. And for those times when Peter Jackson takes us to Middle Earth? When Quentin Tarantino adapts an Elmore Leonard story? When Guillermo del Toro makes two Hellboy movies and goes on to create his own version of the Gill-Man?
  
  All of that is the true magic.
  
  
  And for more magic, like book and movie reviews, click on over to
  Joe's.
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  David Dunlap

  This book looks at fifty feature-length films from the last thirty years or so that, for whatever reason(s) (most often that lovely catch-all 'creative differences'), were never made. The author goes into great detail, sharing the background to the movie (the director's previous projects, for example), the arrangements made for the actual filming, and, finally, what went wrong -- and whether the project may be considered completely 'dead' or possibly just hibernating. Throughout, Hull strives for witty humor (IMHO, he fails more than succeeds -- sorry!!), but it does serve to lighten the tone of the book without unduly detracting from the business at hand. A real plus to the volume is a series of artists' speculative posters for the movies: these are colorful, dramatic, and quite wonderful. -- Personally, I was a bit disappointed to realize that there would be no considerations of movies from earlier in cinematic history (as usual, we here fall prey to the absurd idea that whatever is most recent is 'greatest'), but if newer movies and major directors of our time are of interest to the reader, this book will provide much enjoyment. I come away with it for a greater appreciation for how much goes into preparing for a movie...and how many things can conceivably go wrong in such projects.
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  Zak

  A good looking book with amazing poster creations for these unmade films doesn't make a book good.
  
  Shame, because this book is rather rubbish. Most of these stories have been covered, or are accessible via Wikipedia. A few standout, but consists of a mere sentence surrounding it.
  
  Also covering films that were mere notions and ideas, rather than realities or potentials is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
  
  Joshua writes more about previous and existing films plots than anything of worth around these unmade movies, and seems to be more motivated to obsess over box office numbers, as if this certifies him as knowing his shit, than anything else.
  
  Really disappointed. Poor. Also a lot of the information needs checking, like calling Megan Fox, Jennifer Fox, and getting movies dates wrong. And what is written upon, is very automatic and robotic. The attempts at humour is random, sporadic, and stand out for all of the wrong reasons.
  
  A real mistep and bad idea with high production cost behind it.
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  Andrew

  A really solid overview of a wealth of unfinished and abandoned productions, some of which are speculated on despite a paucity of actual development happening on them (like the Beatles and Rolling Stones projects), and one of which has subsequently gone into actual production (Greg Mottola's making a new Fletch).
  
  The poster mock-ups are what ultimately sold me on picking this up, and - for the most part - they definitely don't disappoint. Do I wish this was more comprehensive? Sure, but I think the fact that one of the projects discussed is already well into productions speaks into the tricky nature of these kinds of books. The industry moves so fast and in such mercurial fashion that it's almost impossible to stay up to date on the sundry projects languishing in development hell at any given moment - none of which are ever really and truly dormant.
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  Matt Goldberg

  On the one hand, I did tear through it and I love the posters for the unmade movies. But overall, the quality of the writing and the level of insight feel better suited to a long-form feature on a website like The Ringer or Buzzfeed. Far too much space is taken up rehashing public histories of filmmakers, the humor falls flat, the copy-editing is shoddy, and the stories of the unmade movies tend to be overwhelming. Some of the projects here are interesting, but overall this doesn’t hold a candle to David Hughes’ books.
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  Alex

  A shallow dive into the world of unmade films, Underexposed is a great easy read, best used between moments where you want to fill a few minutes with some interesting trivia. The sheer amount of famous filmmakers who never had the opportunity to bring their vision to many well known stories and characters makes you yearn for a universe where most, if not all, these worlds were brought to fruition. Read, enjoy, watch movies.
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  Terry Collins

  One of those books I purchased off the cover art and the online description that I now regret. Many of the tales within I already knew from other sources, the fantasy movie posters included for each lost film was hit or miss, and none of the write-ups went into the depth I would have raved about. Not a bad book, but for such a delightful set-up, a painfully ordinary one.
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  Diane Bandeira

  My fiancé was actually the one who bought the book and on a whim I decided to pick it up. I was good! Definitely something more for individual who have a passion for cinema as they’ll have a deeper appreciation for this.
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  Jana

  The posters are beautiful, but the blurbs/chapters are sometimes hard to follow. It's also very focused on what I would consider stereotypical "boy" movies - horror, superheroes, Tarantino. Not a ton of variety in terms of the type of movies discussed.
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  Michael Dennos

  This was a fun read, but I would have appreciated a bit more detail with the movies-that-never were. As-is, the chapters mostly just read like mini Wikipedia articles, though they're still entertaining to read.
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  Matthew

  As a big movie person, this book was going to be an enjoyable one for me. It may not be the most detailed book on these films, but it merely has the goal of getting us excited for films we never got. In that department, it passes with flying colors.
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  Thomas Terence

  I look forward to reading more books by Joshua Hull. You can tell he really likes movies.
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  Tyler Talley

  An extra star for the fantastic artwork, unfortunately not much substance beyond that.
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  John Lamb

  An fun exploration of some great directors and their failed projects.
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  Graham

  Fine. Spends more time on unnecessary background than on the cancelled projects.
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  Lucia Bellanger

  Learned a lot of fascinating stuff and am now yearning for some of these to get made. However, there's a hugely egregious factual error that blew my mind.
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  David Swisher

  A fun little jaunt through some what could have beens.... To see Gladiator 2 written by Nick Cave would be something else.
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  Anthony Lewis

  Catherine Zeta Jones as Cleopatra!?