It's a miracle any movies ever get made, given everything that can go wrong.
With hundreds of people using dangerous equipment while spending tens of millions of dollars,
there are so many variables that, sometimes, filmmakers have to call the whole thing off
— all because someone did something dumb.
Here are some movies that got canceled because of an idiot mistake.
Star Trek: Planet of the Titans
Star Trek was canceled after three seasons in 1969, but its popularity exploded in syndicated
reruns.
By 1977, the series was set to hit the big screen with a film version called Star Trek:
Planet of the Titans, where the Enterprise and Captain Kirk would face off against the
giants of Greek mythology.
But just before filming was set to begin, Paramount president Barry Diller canceled
the whole thing for a really stupid reason: Star Wars was already scheduled to arrive
in theaters that year and he didn't think fans could like sci-fi enough to support two
space epics in the same year.
Uh, way to totally completely misread the entire industry, Barry.
"Kahn"
Justice League: Mortal
Long before Marvel crushed the box office with Avengers, Warner Bros. was planning its
own superhero team-up in the form of Justice League: Mortal, which went into production
in 2007.
With Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller set to direct, the film had a budget of $200
million and had already begun rehearsing with a cast that included Armie Hammer as Batman,
Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, and the rapper Common as Green Lantern.
Just one problem: they forgot to actually finish writing the script.
And before they could get around to it, the Writers Guild of America went on strike.
By the time the strike ended, the actors had moved on to other projects and the whole film
had to be scrapped.
Whoops!
Newt
In 2008, Pixar announced its slate of films for the coming years, and among them was a
movie called Newt.
The plot: "What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet
are forced together by science to save the species, and they can't stand each other?"
It was so far along in production that Pixar animators left little Easter eggs referencing
Newt in Toy Story 3, such as the "Newt Crossing" sign on Andy's bedroom door.
But in 2011, Fox Animation Studios released Rio, which had almost the exact same plot,
only with birds instead of lizards — and which had reportedly been in production since
around 2007, one year before Newt was announced.
Pixar panicked, worried that Newt would be considered a rip-off, and canceled it entirely.
Strange, they didn't do that with Antz and A Bug's Life…
"Ok, can we stop.
Get me Cindy on the phone."
Inhumans
It sure looked like Inhumans — which features Marvel characters who are kinda like mutants,
but also kinda from space — would be the next massive on-screen team-up for Marvel.
Announced for a 2018 release, the film seemed to be built up from two entire seasons' worth
of storylines on ABC's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
But then Inhumans was quietly dropped from the schedule.
Why?
There are a couple theories.
Because of the disconnect between Marvel's TV efforts and its movie business, Marvel
Studios may not have been happy at having the Inhumans movie's details dictated by a
television sho w with middling ratings.
Meanwhile, rumor has it that Inhumans was the pet project of Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter.
And when Perlmutter was ousted from his role at Marvel Studios in favor of studio president
Kevin Feige, Feige dumped the film to stick it to his rival and pursue his own vision
instead, namely Captain Marvel.
"Captain Marvel herself.
Brie Larson."
Although, when you think about it, the biggest mistake of all might've been Marvel selling
the X-Men movie rights to Fox way back in the 1990s.
If they hadn't done that, we'd never have had to hear about the Inhumans movie in the
first place...
A Revenge of the Nerds remake
In 2006, Fox Atomic began filming a modern-day reboot of the classic '80s college movie series
Revenge of the Nerds at Emory University in Atlanta.
And then school officials actually read the script.
Here's actual footage from when Emory University's president finished looking at the screenplay:
"Ahhhhh"
Anyway, after that, the college immediately pulled out of the project, even though much
of the movie had already been filmed.
Producers were forced to complete the movie at tiny Agnes Scott College.
When Fox Atomic honcho Peter Rice saw how rinky dink the movie looked as a result, he
decided to just scrap the entire thing.
Who made the bigger mistake: Emory for agreeing to participate in the movie before reading
the script?
Or Fox for actually caring about production values on Revenge of the Nerds?
"You know Karate."
"No"
"Good"
Two sequels to Terminator: Salvation
In 2009, Terminator: Salvation earned $371 million worldwide, thanks in part to the star
power of Christian Bale as the time-traveling, robot-killing, humanity-saving John Connor.
Two sequels were planned — except the Halcyon Company, which produced the movie, went bankrupt.
Even with all that revenue, through some kind of financial idiocy, they couldn't pay off
the $39 million they owed the hedge fund Pacificor.
In order to pay their debt, Halcyon auctioned off the rights to Terminator.
The winning bid? $29.5 million, from…
Pacificor.
Nice exit strategy!
"Come with me if you want to live."
Dumb and Dumber 2
Here's a real what if: way back in 1998, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone signed
a $1.5 million deal with New Line Cinema to write a prequel to the 1994 hit comedy Dumb
and Dumber.
It sounds like a match made in heaven.
"So you're telling me there's a chance."
So what was the idiot mistake?
Turns out Parker and Stone didn't actually want to do the project in the first place.
They eventually gave the money back, leading New Line to hire other writers for what eventually
turned out to be the universally panned 2003 prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met
Lloyd.
Hey, I like that movie.
The Adventures of Fartman
Howard Stern first created his superhero alter-ego Fartman back in 1981, and turned it into a
pre-internet meme with a massively popular appearance at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards.
"How'd that ass feel Luke?"
"Great Ass, great ass, man"
"Yeah"
It was such a hit that New Line Cinema started production on a feature film called The Adventures
of Fartman, which screenwriter J.F. Lawton promised would be just as crude and lewd as
you'd expect from a Howard Stern movie.
However, when executives got wind of what Lawton was planning, they asked him to tone
it down and make it a mainstream PG-13 film instead.
Stern immediately quit in protest at the dumb request, and that was the end of Fartman.
"Fartman"
Oh, well.
The Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic
Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was once set to play the legendary lead singer of Queen, Freddie
Mercury, who died in 1991.
It seemed like the perfect fit, since Cohen is not only a big fan, he also bears more
than a passing resemblance to Mercury.
But Cohen backed out of the project when he discovered that the surviving members of Queen
wanted the second half of the film to focus not on Mercury, but on how great the band
has continued to be since his death.
Two more Fletch sequels
Eight years after Chevy Chase last played smug and smarmy reporter I.M. Fletch in 1989's
Fletch Lives, the franchise was set to make a comeback thanks to filmmaker Kevin Smith.
Smith wanted the film to focus on Fletch's daughter, to be played by his then-girlfriend
Joey Lauren Adams.
But after Smith and Chase squabbled over a plan to have Chase reprise his role as Fletch,
the entire project was scrapped.
Apparently Chase had something better to do.
"Yeah, I was just passing through town and ah, looking for something to do this evening.
There was nothing going on at the rotary club and I heard about this."
Not to be deterred, Smith later convinced Miramax to buy the rights to the franchise,
this time for an origin prequel that would star his buddy Jason Lee and wouldn't involve
Chase at all.
But Miramax didn't think Lee was a big enough star and shut the whole thing down.
Looks like Chase had the last laugh.
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