For the Fanboys and FanaticsLists of the best (and worst) times superheroes and villains took their fights off the pages of comic books and onto the big screen.
Updated July 14, 2020 16.1K votes 1.8K voters 325.7K views
Voting Rules
Vote up the comic book movies that never got made that you'd most want to see
Some movies are just never meant to be. Be it a scheduling conflict, inflated production costs, script disagreements, the studio wanting the film to go in a different direction, a similar film being released (or worse yet a similar film not doing well), there are endless reasons why movies stop mid pre-production (and more rarely, but still an occasionally, during production itself). Which comic book movies that didn't happen do you wish you could see?
There was a time when comic movies were NOT considered bankable. Thanks should be given to the vastly underrated (and as such not given nearly enough credit for ushering in the superhero film movement) first Blade film, as well as Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, Bryan Singer's X-Men, and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. They all allowed the genre to become the powerhouse it is today.
There have been some follies, LXG, Spider-Man 3, Batman & Robin, and many more all went through endless hoops and sign offs and still got made, but overall, the Comic Book Film is consistently entertaining and a generally welcome addition to any theatre marquee.
These are the comic book movies that never made it for whatever reason, the films (or film ideas) that started and stopped in various stages of development before they graced the screen.
After Joel Schumacher effectively killed the Batman franchise, WB was looking at every angle they could think of to reboot the character. In addition to Batman: Year One, Batman Vs Superman, and Batman Triumphant was the idea of a Batman Beyond film.
The animated sequel to the modern day Batman mythos features an grizzled, elderly Bruce Wayne living as a recluse when young upstart Terry McGinnis breaks in and discovers his secret. He decides to train Terry as a protege in an advanced Mech-Bat-Suit. The show's techno/cyber punk vibe and awesome animation made it a hit and the writer and creators of the show were brought on, along with Boaz Yakin to direct.
This is one of the few movies on this list that might still have a chance of getting made, the future is still... future... and there would be far fewer continuity issues here. Now, if we can just get the Wachowskis onboard with Clint Eastwood playing Bruce Wayne...
David S. Goyer was brought in to write, and potentially direct, a solo Magneto origin film (possibly) starring Michael Fassbender.
Remember that amazing storyline in X-Men: First Class where Magneto is just out and about Nazi hunting? Yeah, that came from this script, and this film would've been a full movie of that. Inglorious Mutants? Yes, please.
Before Hollywood trusted him enough to not handle just one superhero, but a whole team of them (and he validated that trust by grossing $1.5 billion dollars), no one would let Joss Whedon anywhere near a superhero film. He wrote great comics (his run on Astonishing X-Men was amazing), had numerous fan-favorite shows (RIP, "Firefly") but wasn't a known commodity to the masses. Now we can only dream about what a Whedon-verse Wonder Woman could have been.
Joel Silver was producing, with Whedon on both writing and directing duties. He described his Diana Prince as "A little bit like Angelina Jolie. She sort of traveled the world. She was very powerful and very naive about people, and the fact that she was a goddess was how I eventually found my in to her humanity and vulnerability." There are many articles, speeches, and essays about his take on WW and they're well worth a read.
The movie would have been wonderful, but it was just a little ahead of it's time. Years later we still haven't seen the long overdue, on-screen representation of the Amazonian princess on screen just yet.
After Sam Raimi's Spider-Man franchise made $2.5 BILLION, a fourth was quickly greenlit and sped into pre-production with a 2011 release date set.
Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were locked in to return, it looked like Dylan Baker might finally get to play The Lizard. Morbius was also rumored and The Vulture and Black Cat were cast (John Malkovich and Anne Hathaway, respectively). The film then fell apart almost as quickly as it began, when Raimi disagreed with all 4 various drafts of the script then dropped out entirely.
The 2003 Ben Affleck Daredevil left a bad taste in everyone's mouth and its sequel/spin off Elektra made it even worse. Years later, in 2012,Joe Carnahan tried to clean our collective palettes with a whole new direction for the Man without Fear.
One of the few heroes the "dark and gritty reboot" formula actually suits is Daredevil, and that was where we were headed. Then Marvel movies started making money and they got really interested. Carnahan wanted to make a hard R retro, "Serpico style" take on the character, going so far as to make two amazing sizzle reels for the style of his film. Comic audiences were overjoyed, but Fox studio heads weren't. The option ran out and the rights went back to Marvel.
So, lemonade from lemons, Marvel now owns the rights to their character again and they're rapidly moving forward with their Netflix produced take on horn head. Only time will tell.
A Daniel Water's (writer of Heathers) scripted, much weirder take on Catwoman, with Burton directing right after his success with the original Batman seemed like a win-win.
The script involved Michelle Pfeiffer returning to the role, picking up just where the movie left off. Catwoman licking her wounds, and healing up in a spa run by and for supervillains and superheroes. Seriously, that's most of the movie. Definitely an odd satirical take on the character, and certainly better than what happened in the Halle Berry version, but we can understand WB's reluctance.
