I’ve always been very intrigued by the accounts I’ve read of films that were never ultimately made. And when it comes to monster movies, I really feel a twinge of ‘if only’ regret when I see preproduction concept artwork, test footage or maquette models that show beasts that might have featured in these productions but failed to find their way onto the silver screen.

Here’s a whole menagerie of marvellous monsters that didn’t make it into a movie…

GLADIATORS VS WEREWOLVES: EDGE OF EMPIRE

Check out the plot for this unmade creature/action feature: The film would have been set in AD 160 when the Roman Empire occupies Ancient Britain. Hadrian’s Wall divides the land, built to keep back the northern warrior tribes, and something far more dangerous… a clan of savage wolf-like creatures which roam the lowlands! When word reaches Governor Flavius that the Emperor has decreed that new, more fearsome beasts should be captured for the games, the ambitious Governor, who has heard rumours of the fierce wolf-beasts beyond the great wall, senses an opportunity to win favour with the Emperor. So a Centurion named Titus is given orders to hunt down and trap the wolf-creatures. Eventually, Titus and his men discover a warrior clan with the ability to transform at will into mighty, armour-clad werewolves! There is a fierce battle, the were-beasts kill half of the legionaries, but Titus and his surviving men manage to escape and then ensnare the pursuing werewolves. The Governor is obviously delighted that he has these new ferocious fighting savages, but Titus comes to realise that anyone bitten by a werewolf is cursed to become one too. He warns the Governor that the werewolves pose a grave threat if they increase their numbers, but Titus’s reward for warning the Governor is to be stripped of his rank and thrown into the arena… where the fierceness of the creatures will be tested. Titus and the land’s top gladiators are now pitted against the ferocious werewolves, but the beasts are powerful and smart. For every two fighters they slay, they leave one wounded and alive… and Titus’s fears are confirmed; the werewolves are building an army! The final day of the games will be a blood and thunder battle, more savage than any Roman has seen or experienced before…

Well, that would’ve been one hell of a cool historical monster-horror-action film if it’d got made! But the project, now titled EMPIRE OF THE WOLF, seems to be trapped in development hell. The film did enter preproduction for a while, but then everything halted. The script (by Rob Green) has since been optioned and re-optioned a few times, but the production looks no closer to finally starting.

During the preproduction stage, Martin Rezard (a talented character and creature designer who has worked on films including  JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM, WORLD WAR Z, ROGUE ONE, PROMETHEUS, and many more) did produce a very nice-looking design for a character called Longscar. This were-dude would really have looked amazing on the big screen!

THE ALIEN SHEEP FROM VINCENT WARD’S UNMADE VERSION OF ALIEN 3

Vincent Ward, director of the wonderful THE NAVIGATOR: A MEDIEVAL ODYSSEY (1988), co-wrote a 1990 script draft for a sequel to ALIENS with John Fasano. (Ward and Fasano were actually the fourth and fifth of ten different writers to tackle the ALIEN³ project. Two of the other writers were William Gibson and Eric Red).

Ward and Fasano’s script remains the most famous of the unmade ALIEN³ screenplays because it is so outlandishly imaginative. It was set on a monastery satellite called Arceon, which was mainly constructed of wood and crewed by monks who were members of a Christian and technology-hostile sect. Much of the plot and some of the characters from Ward’s script were ultimately combined with the prison setting from David Twohy’s proposed script to form the basis of the filmed version of ALIEN³.

(NOTE: The core of the satellite/planetoid was not made of wood; it was covered in wood, like scaffolding that had grown outwards from a technological centre. This modification was to make the satellite bear a resemblance to an ancient abbey.)

In Ward and Fasano’s script a sheep on board the satellite becomes a host to the alien. The animal explodes in a shower of gore and a young Alien exits the carcass. This is how the creature was described; ‘It shows the characteristics of the animal in which it has gestated. Tiny razor sharp teeth and black, glass-like eyes peer from an elongated head covered with downy, but gore-matted WOOL. A quadruped, its shrunken hind legs struggling to free itself from the cooling morass of intestines.’

Mike Worrall, working as Ideas Artist on the project, produced concept artwork for the sheep-xenomorph, which shows how the sheep-creature had a very Alien-esque head. But what is most startling with this concept is the human face situated where its arse should be!  Well, Vincent Ward was very interested in Medieval imagery and concepts, so I think this face-on-a-butt idea is very much influenced by the kinds of medieval artwork that frequently depicted devils & demons with human faces on their arses.

Anyway, the production of Ward’s version of the script did begin, with entire sections of the wooden planetoid/satellite (which included sections of the abbey) being constructed. So, when it was decided to can Ward’s project, it was decided to keep much of what had been built to use in the new version, to be directed by David Fincher, because of the amount of money already invested in the production. That’s why you can occasionally spot Gothic arches and church trappings lining the prison sets in the David Fincher film.

CURSE OF THE DEMON

There were plans to produce an extremely low budget remake of CURSE OF THE DEMON. Makeup FX maestro Chris Walas did a whole bunch of stuff for the project, but, for him, the demon was the most enjoyable, fun part. As Chris admits, the demon was a low-cost creation: “Cheap as anything, sisal fiber for hair, etc. It was a two person puppet/suit. It was meant to only be shot waist up, high contrast and in smoke.”

Chris says that shooting did begin for the film, out at the Trona Pinnacles at China Lake, but then the funding fell through. It was never finished, unfortunately. Chris has said that he would have loved to have seen this one on screen. Oh well, such a shame that isn’t to be…

GIANT HORDE BEAST NEZURA

After the success of Toho’s GODZILLA, rival company Daiei Film Co. wanted to produce their own creature feature. It was going to be called… GIANT HORDE BEAST NEZURA.

The plot focused on a new high-calorie superfood called S602, which is dumped after it seems human test subjects reacted badly to it. Rats eat the dumped superfood, they begin to grow larger, they attack people and livestock, then the killer rodents head for Tokyo… and a super-large rat called Nezura leads this vicious rat-swarm! In the plot the rats and Nezura are finally beaten when the rats become so aggressive they turn on each other in a cannibalistic feeding frenzy.

GIANT HORDE BEAST NEZURA actually started production in 1963, but it was eventually halted, and Daiei instead made GAMERA: THE GIANT MONSTER.

Nazura would’ve been played, of course, by a man in a creature costume. Here are two rat-tastic publicity stills that were created for the flick before the production was shut down…

Peter Berg’s DUNE

In the late 2000s, Paramount Pictures attempted to make their adaptation of DUNE for the big screen. They chose Peter Berg, director of THE KINGDOM (2007), HANCOCK (2008) and BATTLESHIP (2012), to helm the project.

British comic book artist Jock was brought on by Berg to do some concept art, and he did a series of pieces, including, of course, designs for the famous sandworms.

But by late 2009 Peter Berg and his production company had dropped completely out of the DUNE project. Then, in January 2010, it was revealed that Pierre Morel, director of DISTRICT B13 (2004) and TAKEN (2008), had been hired, but he too would finally exit the director’s chair. Finally, the rights expired and Paramount’s four-year journey to adapt Frank Herbert’s novel came to an end.

Paul Blaisdell’s ALLOSAURUS

Special effects artist Paul (INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN) Blaisdell and editor/actor/super-fan Bob Burns teamed-up in 1962 to publish a short-lived magazine called Fantastic Monsters of the Films. They shot a 16mm short called THE CLIFF MONSTER, featuring a model creature that Blaisdell had built. This clockwork humanoid beast could be wound up and ‘programmed’ to make certain movements. This home movie was available for purchase (in both 8mm and 16mm editions) via the pages of their magazine. Blaisdell also created an eighteen-inch mechanical model of a carnivorous dinosaur, which could also be programmed to perform some independent moves. Blaisdell took some photos of this prehistoric predator but, unfortunately, he never got around to shooting any footage of it in action.

LA LECHUZA

This film would have focused on the Lechuza (the Spanish word for owl): this is a myth popular throughout northern Mexico and Texas, and the plot would have featured an old woman who shapeshifts into a giant owl: La Lechuza! The beaked creature would have taken revenge on the people who had wronged the old woman during her life.

The talented special effects artist Joe (TERROR TOONS) Castro built an amazing-looking Lechuza monster head for this project, but the film remains on hold, and Joe has said that he doesn’t know if it will ever be shot. Man, I wish this movie would go into production: I’d love to see Joe’s beaked owl-beast rampaging across the screen!

THE PIKE

Cliff Twemlow’s ill-fated UK-set killer pike project, based on his own pulp novel, would have starred Joan Collins and Jack Hedley. The opening scene of the film would have involved a lone fisherman sitting on a pier with his legs dangling over the jetty side. The camera was to be the eyes of the giant pike looking at the dangling legs. The camera would have moved faster and faster to its prey, and the music (a la JAWS) would have speeded up too. There would have been a great swirl of water, utter silence… and all that was to be seen on the bloody surface of Lake Windermere was the fisherman’s hat.

The film never finally happened, unfortunately, due to technical difficulties and lack of funding. Before this monster fish movie floundered and died, two large model pikes were designed and created by Charles Wyatt. One was a 12 foot pike with a radio controlled motor installed inside it to propel the fish on the water’s surface. The other pike was a rigid fibreglass model.

In May 1982 Joan Collins even did a press tour, wowing the journalists and photographers by posing with one of the pike models!

Severin Films will soon be releasing a Blu-ray box set centred around the documentary MANCUNIAN MAN: THE LEGENDARY LIFE OF CLIFF TWEMLOW. A featurette, which will cover the full, fascinating details behind THE PIKE, will be included in the box set!

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s DUNE

Producer Michel Seydoux offered to bankroll director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel DUNE. The director made substantial changes to the source material and planned to cast surrealist artist Salvador Dalí as the Emperor.

Scriptwriter Dan O’Bannon and artist H.R. Giger, who would both go on to work on Ridley Scott’s ALIEN, were attached to this project, but the production was destined never to be made.
The documentary JODOROWSKY’S DUNE (2013) tells the story of this ambitious but ultimately doomed film project.

THE CURSE OF THE SPONGEMAN

THE CURSE OF THE SPONGEMAN would have been a full length film about a humanoid creature named Spongeman. The creature’s origin would’ve occurred during the hurricanes of the 1920s, when the wind and currents stirred up local spongebeds and formed an elusive being that has been mysteriously living in the waters off the Florida Keys ever since.

Quincy Perkins, a director of a bunch of short films like THE TRACKS (and who was a location assistant on THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON), had dreamt of making a Spongeman movie since he was a child, when he grew up in Key West and was obsessed with the old Spongeman statue in the centre of town.  This original Spongeman figure was created by an artist in the 1920s as a monument to the sponge fishermen of Key West. 

The idea of this magical sponge creature captured Quincy’s imagination and, many years later, he eventually shot an 8-minute film – then he decided to expand the project into a feature length movie. Quincy wanted to make a film that was true to the spirit of the creature feature films of the 1950s, but was consciously adapted to the present day, creating a modern fairy tale of sorts. 

Quincy tried to raise funds via a Kickstarter campaign, promising a movie that would’ve starred Herschell Gordon Lewis, Oscar Torre, Tom Frank and Jessica Miano Kruel. Quincy hoped to raise £15,466 to make this small, independent film, but only £4,625 was pledged and the project was canceled in 2015. This is a shame, because I would’ve loved to see the Spongeman stomping around the Florida Keys!

Vincenzo Natali’s IT

Here are some Pennywise designs from director Vincenzo (SPLICE) Natali’s pitch for a version of Stephen King’s IT.

The drawings of Pennywise below are by concept artist Amro Attia…

These drawings are by Vincenzo Natali himself…

As this article is all about unmade films, you won’t be too surprised to find out that Vincenzo Natali’s IT movie failed to get produced.

Clive Barker’s THE MUMMY

Back in the 1980s Universal was planning to use its Mummy monster character to relaunch its horror franchise. Universal hired George A. Romero initially, and he was attached to write and direct the revival of the 1932 Universal monster movie, but he was limited to a budget of $10 million. The project just seemed to lose momentum, Romero left, and then Clive (HELLRAISER) Barker came onboard.

Barker, along with Mick Garris (who wrote several drafts of the script), pitched their Mummy movie idea to Universal in 1989, and it would’ve included the Mummy becoming a transgender character: starting off as a little boy, the character would become an ‘exquisite woman’. Barker was also going to make his Mummy flick more sexual and dark, focusing on the owner of a museum, who is attempting to revive the mummies.

Special effects expert Steve Johnson offered to help Barker create a visual proof-of-concept for his Mummy idea, to be shown to the Universal producers. Johnson financed the production of concept drawings and models entirely out of his own pocket, to help Barker sell the project to Universal, but Barker’s pitch was rejected outright by the studio, and THE MUMMY (1999), directed by Stephen Sommers, was eventually made instead.

Neill Blomkamp’s ALIEN 5

This film project from Blomkamp was set to be another ALIEN sequel and it was going to explore the Xenomorph genome. The plot would’ve involved experiments being performed on captive Aliens. All types of genetically-altered Xenomorphs would have been created by meddling Weyland-Yutani scientists!

See below for lots of concept art visuals produced for this unmade ALIEN sequel…

Here’s a sculpture of the four-armed genetically modified Xenomorph that would have featured in Neill Blomkamp’s ALIEN 5…

Vincenzo Natali’s PREDATORS

Vincenzo Natali, the writer and director of sci-fi horror films SPLICE (2009) and CUBE (1997), did a pitch at 20th Century Fox for PREDATORS. This was some time before Robert Rodriguez produced his own version of PREDATORS (2010), which, of course, starred Adrien Brody, Topher Grace and Laurence Fishburne.

Vincenzo Natali said that, at the time of his pitch, there was no script, just a logline, so he was free to do whatever he wanted. Natali himself produced some storyboards for the pitch, and he also had concept art created by Dan Milligan and Amro Attia.

Natali’s version of PREDATORS did not go into production, but, by the look of Amro Attia’s concept drawing, it seems that if the film had been made… the Predators would have looked sleek, metallic and angular!

THE TOURIST

Screenwriter Clair Noto’s THE TOURIST, which she wrote for Universal studio executive Sean Daniels, was a hot script back in the early 80s, focusing on  a group of exiled aliens living among us humans. The plot included the Manhattan Grief Clinic, which was actually a front for the extraterrestrials’ hideaway, otherwise known as the Corridor: here various aliens lurked in cubicles, living out their useless lives.

Producer Renee Missell and director Brian Gibson became attached, and soon Clair Noto was booted from the project, which became a bigger and bigger mess, until it faltered and Universal pulled the plug. After that Noto took her script to United Artists and then to Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studio. But events always went against her, and although Dino DeLaurentis and other folks tried to get THE TOURIST produced, it never ultimately got made, even after the script found its way back to Universal.

What is interesting is that H.R. Giger was brought onto the project for a while, and he conceptualised lots of very evocative, memorable alien designs for the Corridor sequences.

THE NATURAL HISTORY PROJECT

This unmade dinosaur-focused feature film was conceived by Jim Henson in the mid-80s and would have featured special effects by the Jim Henson Creature Shop.

The super-talented William Stout wrote the screenplay (he actually wrote two versions of the script, one with a narration and one with no voice-overs whatsoever: a totally visual telling of the story). This serious muppet dino movie, which was given the generic title THE NATURAL HISTORY PROJECT so that (hopefully) nobody would make a similar film, was to be directed by Henson.

Warner Brothers committed to a budget of 25 million dollars for production, plus 5 million dollars for character research and development. Stout began designing the characters and painting key scenes from his script. However… the project was scrapped when Warners discovered that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were making a similar project called THE LAND BEFORE TIME.

All I can say is that the cancellation of this Henson project was a damn, damn shame!

BABY KONG

This is an ad for the Mario Bava project BABY KONG, which was announced in 1976 but was never made…

This film was obviously planned as a cash-in to ride on the coattails of the ’76 version of KING KONG. Did this movie have any chance of being any good? Who knows, but it was going to be directed by the great Mario Bava, so I, for one, would definitely have watched it! Maybe it would’ve been chimp-tastic!

DRACULA – character designs by Frank Frazetta

Dominic Orsatti, president of Orsatti Productions Inc., announced in April 1976 that he would begin production on a feature‐length animated version of DRACULA.

An original screenplay, supposedly based very closely on the original Bram Stoker novel, was written by George Greer.
The film, which was budgeted at around $3 million, was going to base the look of the characters on designs by illustrator supreme Frank Frazetta.

Orsatti was going to serve as executive producer on the production, with Emil Carle producing the film and acting as technical director. Andrew Chiaramonte and George Greer were slated to be the joint directors of animation. Damn it! Why wasn’t this film made?!!

Frazetta heard that the film got postponed almost immediately after he started work on it, so he didn’t send any of his art off, which is why it is still around for us to look at…

ILSA MEETS BRUCE LEE IN THE DEVIL’S TRIANGLE

Yes, somebody planned to have Dyanne Thorne’s infamous antiheroine Ilsa meet up with Bruce Lee!

In a 2011 interview Thorne confirmed that the project was actually discussed, but a script wasn’t written. Thorne was told to study martial arts, which she did, and she got herself into good physical shape. Thorne said that money was going to be raised for it, but, shortly after, Bruce Lee died. So the filmmakers were then going to use top Bruceploitation actor Bruce Li. There was a conflict in their schedules, unfortunately, and the script was still not ready, so the project faded away. The Washington Post did publish a full page article with pictures publicising the possibility of the film, making the unmade flick look pretty legitimate.

Now, there’s no way that Bruce Lee, had he lived, would’ve chosen to make this movie. But I definitely think a movie starring Dyanne Thorne and Bruce Li could’ve been produced and it would have been great, exploitative fun. But it didn’t happen, though a promotional ad was created… and it featured Ilsa, Bruce Lee, a shark and what looks like a gill-man or a zombie! Wow!

DOCTOR WHO’S GREATEST ADVENTURE

During a special event held at London’s British Film Institute (where the two 1960s Peter Cushing Doctor Who films were screened), there was a Q&A session. One of the people on stage was Sergei Subotsky, the son of Milton Subotsky, who was the original Doctor Who movie screenwriter. Sergei revealed that, in the 1970s, his dad Milton wrote a script for a third Doctor Who movie… DR. WHO’S GREATEST ADVENTURE.

Now, this 3rd cinematic outing for the Doctor was not going to feature the Daleks again as the antagonists. Oh no, forget your usual Doctor Who foes… instead… the plot would have involved giant crabs!!!

According to Sergie, the screenplay for this planned 70s movie was actually a redrafting of a script that already existed. What happened was that Milton inserted Doctor Who into the existing script… and the original script was called KING CRAB. And, before it was called that, the script was titled NIGHT OF THE CRABS. Yes, you read that correctly! It seems that the original script was an adaptation of Guy N Smith’s creature-horror novel ‘Night of the Crabs’!!!  And now Doctor Who was part of the tale, battling the killer crustaceans!

There’s no way that DR. WHO’S GREATEST ADVENTURE would have featured the kind of gory, visceral killings depicted in Guy N Smith’s original novel, but, hell, I would’ve loved to have seen the Doctor take on these pincered monsters with his sonic screwdriver! The film, of course, never got made, but the script was written. No concept drawings were produced, unfortunately, but here’s a faux poster that was created by Andydrewz (Andrew-Mark Thompson) for an article on this unmade film that was published in the Telegraph newspaper…

AXA

In the early 80s Steven Archer, the stop-motion animator who worked on CLASH OF THE TITANS and KRULL, did a couple of concept drawings to show Milton Subotsky, the producer who was thinking of making a movie based on a UK newspaper fantasy-sci-fi comic strip called AXA.

Steve kept in contact with Subotsky, who had a script for AXA, but it never got made.

GODZILLA VS GHOST GODZILLA

Yes, you read that title right! This film would have seen a 90s-era Godzilla facing off against the spirit of the original 50s Godzilla!

Also known as GODZILLA VS GODZILLA, Toho toyed with variations on a story that would’ve had the modern Godzilla threatened by an incarnation of the first Big G.

One idea had Godzilla Junior going back to 1954 to fight against the original Godzilla, then later story versions dealt with the conflict between Godzilla and the restless spirit of the first Godzilla, set in the present.

Concept art for the Ghost Godzilla character was created by Shinji Nishikawa. Conceptual art was also produced that showed a newer version of the kaiju Anguirus. The whole ‘spirit Godzilla’ idea was eventually dropped and, after several other unmade concepts were considered, GODZILLA VS DESTOROYAH was made instead, in 1995.
(The concept of the ‘soul’ of the original Godzilla being reawakened was finally used in GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA in 2002)

Rob Zombie’s THE BLOB

Rob (THE DEVIL’S REJECTS) Zombie planned to direct a new version of THE BLOB. The abandoned project would have starred Rob’s wife Sheri Moon Zombie (surprise!)

As you can see from the concept art drawn by the talented Alex Horley, Rob’s take on the plot moved away from the idea of just one large, gelatinous blob and focused on swarms of victims becoming purple blobby-zombies…

THE GOLEM

Producers at Cannon in the 1980s took out an advertisement in Variety announcing pre-production on a movie called THE GOLEM… which would have seen the supernatural clay being coming up against… Charles Bronson!!!

Unfortunately, the proposed budget was high compared to the company’s usual output, so the film was put on hold until finances improved, but box office flops like MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and LIFEFORCE left the company rather skint, and so the film was never made. What a shame!

WAR EAGLES

Boy, this is definitely a movie I wish had got produced!

Willis O’Brien’s unmade project involved a hidden world of dinosaurs and members of a lost Viking tribe that ride giant eagles! The finale would have seen these raptor-riders fighting Nazi zeppelins over New York City! Just let that description sink in: Vikings on giant prehistoric eagles fighting Nazi airships over modern day Manhatten!!!

KING KONG producer Merian C. Cooper planned this as an epic Technicolor production in the late 1930s. Storyboards and illustrations were produced, as were multiple versions of the script, including a final draft written by Cyril (FORBIDDEN PLANET) Hume. Detailed models and sets were built and Technicolor test footage featuring stop-motion animation by O’Brien and Marcel Delgado was shot… but the harsh reality of an impending world war put a stop to the production in 1940. Jeez, I would’ve loved to have seen this flick!

Here’s some exquisite WAR EAGLES art…

B&W test footage stills…

Technicolor frames from the animation test footage…

Here’s the cover for a novel, published in 2008, that was based on the WAR EAGLES screenplay…

Finally, here’s the cover of the book ‘WAR EAGLES – The Unmaking of an Epic – An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters’, written by David Conover and Philip J. Riley, which takes an in-depth look at this unmade fantasy epic…

Jan de Bont’s GODZILLA

In November, 1993, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, successful scriptwriters responsible for the likes of THE MASK OF ZORRO and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, submitted the first draft of their GODZILLA screenplay to TriStar. In their story Godzilla would be pitted against a monster known as the Gryphon: a huge beast with the body of a cougar, the wings of a bat and a tongue of snakes. There were also creatures called Probe Bats in the plot. Interestingly, Elliott & Rossio had originally wanted to feature King Ghidorah in their screenplay, but Toho’s three-headed space dragon was, at that time, off-limits.
(Later, after various drafts, Elliott & Rossio’s script would be rewritten by Don Macpherson)

Directors who were considered for this Godzilla project included Tim Burton, Joe Dante and Joe Johnston. Eventually Jan De Bont became attached. De Bont, the director of SPEED, was a big Toho fan, so he certainly was a good fit.

Jan De Bont saw GODZILLA as a world famous movie monster icon primed for an update with modern Hollywood special effects technology. But there were movie executives who saw Big G as a campy, overly-kitschy character that would not appeal to an international audience without a complete overhaul. This attitude was what eventually forced De Bont off the project. De Bont also said that the studio just wanted the film to be made cheaper and faster. De Bont signed on for the disaster flick TWISTER instead, which became a big financial hit.

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin then came on board the GODZILLA project, but they were only willing to take on the film if they were allowed to completely reinvent Godzilla into something wholly their own, including a design for the great reptile that included a distinctive underbite and a lither physique. They also did not want any other giant monsters in the story for Godzilla to fight. And so this was how the divisive 1998 GODZILLA came into being.

Anyway, back to the De Bont version: lots of concept art, storyboards, sculpts, etc, were produced before this iteration of the GODZILLA project withered and died.
These are shots of the (unfinished) maquette of Godzilla designed by Stan Winston Studio, under the direction of Jan De Bont…

Here’s a pic of a finished Godzilla maquette…

Storyboard panels by David Russell…

Some Big G concept art…

Talented artist Carlos Huante’s concepts for the Gryphon…

Some Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery concept art for the Gryphon…

Stan Winston Studio’s large Gryphon maquette…

Designs for the Probe Bats by Carlos Huante…

Yet more marvellous Probe Bat concept work, this time by Bruce Fuller…

Here’s an industry trade ad announcing TriStar`s GODZILLA for 1994…

Lastly, here’s a close-up of the Godzilla maquette’s well-detailed face…

THE LEGEND OF KING KONG

In 1975 Universal approached RKO Pictures and offered them $200,000 (plus five percent of the film’s net profits) for the rights to make a new King Kong movie. There was no written contract, but Universal was confident that they received verbal approval from RKO, but… they would soon learn that RKO had actually signed a deal with Dino De Laurentiis and Paramount Pictures to produce a remake of the film. Universal hired Joseph Sargent to direct their film and Jim Danforth offered to produce the effects for the film using stop-motion animation. Eventually, however, a federal judge ruled that Paramount did have the rights to produce a KING KONG remake, and that RKO had exclusive rights to the 1933 film, which forced Universal to drop its plans for THE LEGEND OF KING KONG. It got shelved forever. Such a shame!

Along with the titular great ape, the film would have featured an Arsinoitherium, a Baluchitherium, a centipede creature, a giant amphibian, a huge vulture, a Parasaurolophus, a reptilian eel, a fictional dinosaur called a Triclonius and pit scorpions.

Here are some of Jim Danforth’s preproduction concepts…

DINO-RIDERS

The (now-defunct) animation company Vanguard Animation boasted an interesting slate of upcoming projects before the outfit folded. John Stevenson (co-director of KUNG FU PANDA) was attached to either produce and/or direct six of these projects… and one of them was… DINO-RIDERS.

This animated movie would have been based on the Mattel/Tyco toy property from the late 80s. The story focused on the Valorians, a future race of humans who are at war with the humanoid-frog-ish Rulons. To escape the assault on their home, the Valorians use a Space Time Energy Projector machine, but this zaps them (and the pursuing Rulons) all the way back to prehistoric Earth during the age of the dinosaurs. The heroic Valorians find that they are able to telepathically communicate with the dinosaurs, which means they befriend the great reptiles and start riding them! But Vanguard Animation folded before this fine-sounding animation flick could be made, their collapse aided, no doubt, by the poor reception Vanguard received for the films they had just released (such as HAPPILY N’EVER AFTER). Oh well.

Here are some of the (pretty awesome) concept artworks for the animation project…

SUPERMAN LIVES

On paper this Superman movie project looked kinda promising: it had a light, fun, action-packed script written by comic book fan-boy Kevin Smith, it was going to be directed by Tim Burton and it was set to star the Oscar-winning Nicolas Cage as Supes. But it all started to go wrong…

First Burton removed Kevin Smith from the project. There was not much in Smith’s script that could be described as typically ‘Burtonesque’ and it didn’t really contain the themes that the director wanted to address, like Superman’s outsider angst, etc, so Burton brought in Wesley Strick to write a new draft. Dan Gilroy also did another draft of the script. And yet more drafts were to follow. Expensive preproduction progressed but, in late 1997, Warner Bros decided to cancel the film, partly because BATMAN AND ROBIN had become a commercial and critical disaster, which made the studio very, very nervous about SUPERMAN LIVES. Warners Bros had had several flops in the mid-90s and they just couldn’t afford to take such a big risk. Burton made his SLEEPY HOLLOW project instead.

SUPERMAN LIVES would certainly have been a quirky big budget movie if it’d got produced, with some strange creatures and character-designs added to the mix.

Here are some colour concept drawings, by Jacques Rey, that he created for Tim Burton’s unmade superhero film…

Two creature studies by Jacques Rey…

And here are concepts for the villain Doomsday…

Some more concept art for SUPERMAN LIVES…

John Carpenter’s CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

John Carpenter was approached to remake CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON in 1992, with Rick Baker creating designs for the new look of the Creature. In the script for this project, which I read many years ago, the Creature dwelt in a submerged pyramid-temple and could transform itself so that it could resemble a human. I presume this idea was included to provide the FX crew with an excuse to do some prosthetic transformation scenes, but, for me, it was a concept that I didn’t really like.

Anyway, this project, which was going to be pretty violent and gory, was cancelled due to the failure of Carpenter’s MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN at the box office the same year.

NIGHT SKIES

This unmade movie would have been produced by Steven Spielberg, written by John Sayles and directed by Ron Cobb. The project was shelved and eventually evolved into E.T.

Here are some of Ron Cobb’s alien concept drawings…

John Carpenter’s DARKCHYLDE

Writer/artist Randy Queen, the creator of ‘Darkchylde’, a comic book which focused on Ariel Chylde, a heroine who could transform into the creatures of her nightmares, teamed-up with Weta Workshop to produce some digital test footage of Ariel transforming into her winged, demonic side and fighting a monster. John Carpenter then came onboard to help bring the nightmarish tale to the silver screen. At one point a producer mentioned that Chloë Grace Moretz, Elizabeth Olson and Elle Fanning were ‘being thought of,’ though there was never any indication that any of the actresses had actually been approached regarding this project. Finally, as is often the way, DARKCHYLDE simply stalled and died.

Shots from the DARKCHYLDE test footage…

HOSTS

A sci-fi-horror script called HOSTS was written back in the 90s and, for a short time, an executive from a film company was interested in the development of the project. Concept designs were created for the aliens, which were referred to as Swarmers: these eel-like critters could group together with a central Queen body to become a Colony Creature.

Brett Piper (director, FX man & stop-motion animator of A NYMPHOID BARBARIAN IN DINOSAUR HELL, TRICLOPS, QUEEN CRAB and many other films) built a posable model of a Swarmer, to help sell-in the project.

In the end, HOSTS never happened, but these drawings and photos of Brett’s model creature are worth checking out…

MOTHRA VS. BAGAN

This 1990 Toho movie concept would have seen Mothra appearing on-screen for the first time since DESTROY ALL MONSTERS. The plot involved a monster called Bagan for Mothra to battle.

However, due to the poor box office performance of GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE, the film was cancelled. The great moth would eventually return in 1992’s GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA.

LOST PATROL

This is the uber-talented Charlie Chiodo’s concept illustration for an unmade lost world movie called LOST PATROL, which the Chiodo brothers were hoping to make…

WAR OF THE WORLDS

Stop-motion king Ray Harryhausen produced evocative B&W concept drawings and made a 16mm test reel in order to sell-in his version of H.G. Wells’ alien invasion story THE WAR OF THE WORLDS , which would have boasted stop-motion tentacled extraterrestrials and Martian tripods.

Harryhausen took his project all around Hollywood, but, back in the 1940s, nobody was interested.

Here’s a bunch of his fine drawings…

Here is Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion Martian puppet, as seen in his 16mm test reel…

Artist Graham Humphreys painted this wonderful illustration to accompany the book ‘Harryhausen: The Lost Movies’, published by Titan Books…

GRANDMA LUCY

Ken Barthelmey created some concept designs for this unproduced film project in early 2011. It was planned to be a post-apocalyptic horror movie featuring an old creepy female creature as the main antagonist…

NESSIE

Hammer Films planned to collaborate with Toho to make a giant creature feature about the Loch Ness Monster! Yay! But it didn’t get made. Boo!

Concept drawings were done and ads were released, claiming the movie would be ready for world release in 1977. That, obviously, never came to pass (sob).

Here’s concept artwork of Nessie…

Here’s a two-page advertisement that Hammer put out…

This is a commissioned piece from artist Lenny Romero,  showing Nessie wrecking Gibraltar…

This is another Greg Noneman commission, titled ‘Terror at Tower Bridge’, which was created by Matt Frank for the G-Fest panel ‘Nessie: The Kaiju that Hammer Loched Away’. This illustration was inspired by a piece of concept art from the unmade Toho/Hammer Nessie film…

Guillermo del Toro’s CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

Guillermo del Toro, who was a huge fan of the original version of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, planned a remake. A conceptual Creature maquette was designed by Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery and sculpted & painted by David Grasso, for Mike Elizalde’s creature effects studio Spectral Motion.

Guillermo del Toro’s vision involved the story being seen from the Creature’s point of view, and the film would have ended with the gill-man and his human love interest getting together. Universal, however, was not open to these ideas and the film was eventually scrapped. Guillermo, of course, would go on to make his own distinctive gill-man tale, THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017), which became an Oscar-winner.

WHEN THE EARTH CRACKED OPEN

This is another unmade Hammer film! It would have been a Ray Harryhausen/Hammer Films collaboration, akin to ONE MILLION YEARS BC.

Harryhausen created some concept art featuring dinosaur-type reptilian beasts emerging from the ground. The movie would have contained swamp creatures, giant stag beetles, a giant armadillo and giant soldier ants.

Regular Hammer poster artist Tom Chantrell did some promotional artwork for this project, which remained a rather unfocused affair, resulting in some imagery looking futuristic whilst other images looked prehistoric…

GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS in 3-D

Back in the 1980s an American Godzilla project, with a script written by Fred Dekker, looked set to go into production, with Dave Allen lined up to do the stop-motion animation to bring the great reptile to life . Steve Miner was attached as director and William Stout produced lots of concept art and storyboards. The movie, which was set to feature a more dinosaur-like Godzilla, never got made, maybe because it was obviously going to be full of special effects and would be very costly. Stout has said that he also thought that Steve Miner might have been an issue. Miner had directed a couple of high-grossing FRIDAY THE 13TH movies, but perhaps the Hollywood studios wondered if he had the directing chops to do this big scale film justice. Whatever the reasons were, this 3-D take on Big G stalled.

These are some of the many storyboard panels created by William Stout, which were done so that Steve Miner could come up with a realistic effects budget…

In the script Godzilla attacks San Francisco and ends up dying on Alcatraz. Here’s William Stout’s illustration of Godzilla at Alcatraz…

This is the preliminary charcoal drawing William Stout made prior to creating a presentation painting…

Stephen Czerkas sculpted the fully articulated foam rubber animation maquette, based on Stout’s Godzilla design, which Dave Allen would’ve animated…

FORCE OF THE TROJANS 

With a script by writer Beverly (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) Cross and a studio deal set up by producer Charles H. Schneer, Ray Harryhausen’s fantasy adventure project looked like it was going to get made, but it was never, sadly, given the green light by MGM.

The plot would have involved a plethora of mythical characters. Here are some of Ray Harryhausen’s concept drawings…

Here’s a sculpture Ray Harryhausen did of the head of the creature known as Scylla…

TIMEGATE

Stop-motion animator and ace matte artist Jim Danforth’s famous unmade film, TIMEGATE, was going to be a time travel tale that owed some of its plot ideas to Ray Bradbury’s short story ‘A Sound of Thunder’.
Danforth would have been the writer, co-designer, director and co-producer of this sci-fi-adventure film.

Here’s some artwork created by Danforth…

Phil Tippet built this Triassic therapsid resin maquette. It was hand-painted in shades of green…

Phil Tippett’s maquette of a Wolf-Lizard…

ELEPHANT RUSTLERS

Legendary special effects pioneer Willis (KING KONG) O’Brien had the idea to make an adventure feature film concerning an exotic hunt for elephant thieves in Burma, where the expedition is threatened… by giant lizards that resemble Komodo Dragons! As with many of O’Brien’s concepts, the project, from 1960, was unfortunately left unmade…

HAG

Also going by the name SHUT-EYE, this horror-creature-feature would have been about a night hag intent on killing everyone at a sleep disorder clinic. The supernatural she-thing would have been able to contort itself to slither through pipes and vents, and enlarge its mouth to give its victims a ‘kiss of death’ to suck away their breath. The script was optioned, special effects master Steve Wang came on board to direct the film, but the project ultimately ground to a halt.

Here are some visuals produced by Steve Wang…

A detailed full-body maquette of the Hag was sculpted by Steve Wang, showing the unsettling mix of scrawniness and loose, drooping flesh…

Some later Hag visuals…

MONSTERS OF SHADOW LAKE

William R. Stromberg, who directed THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER, planned to make another movie about aquatic beasts, called MONSTERS OF SHADOW LAKE.

Jim Danforth produced a concept painting to help promote the project, but the flick didn’t get made…

CENTAURI III

This is another unmade movie by Jim Danforth, that would’ve, of course, featured stop-motion creatures. Here’s Danforth’s concept art showing a tentacled alien critter…

THONGOR IN THE VALLEY OF DEMONS

Back in the 1970s producer Milton Subotsky considered making a Conan the Barbarian movie, then decided to try and bring sword and sorcery hero Thongor to the screen instead. The film’s highlights would have included giant flying spiders, huge serpents, magical swords, a flying metal boat, princesses and Lizard-Hawks.

United Artists was allegedly going to foot the bill, but pulled out and Subotsky’s production stalled permanently. This is a real shame, because this could’ve been a fun sword and sorcery yarn with sci-fi elements and stop-motion monsters!

Modeler Tony McVey, who’d worked on SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER, built a stop-motion model of a Lizard-Hawk. The animation of the film’s creatures would have been handled by Barry Leith, an animator of British kids shows like THE WOMBLES (1975).
Here are some shots of the Lizard-Hawk model…

KRANGOA

Jim Danforth tried to get a giant ape movie made in the 90s, called KRANGOA, but, as so often happens, the project failed to get traction, despite the fact Danforth painted this wonderful concept artwork…

THE BUBBLES

This unrealized early 1960s Willis O’Brien project would have been about massive, tentacled jellyfish-type creatures appearing in Baja, California, where they start eating up everything in their path.

Here’s some concept artwork O’Brien produced to illustrate his ideas…

KING KONG VS. FRANKENSTEIN

This was yet another unmade Willis O’Brien flick (and there were many more, such as WAR EAGLES, etc). This project, also known as KING KONG VS. PROMETHEUS, was conceived by O’Brien as a sequel to KING KONG (1933), with the big ape coming face to face with an equally enormous Frankenstein Monster.

O’Brien’s story idea was stolen by producer John Beck, who sold it to Toho, who ultimately made KING KONG VS. GODZILLA instead, in 1962. O’Brien contemplated suing Beck for intent to defraud, but he did not have enough money for a protracted legal battle. On November 10th, 1962, Willis O’Brien died of a heart attack in his home. His widow, Darlyne, would later cite “the frustration of the King Kong Vs. Frankenstein deal” as a contributing factor to his death.

Here are some of the pencil, pen & ink and gouache illustrations that Willis O’Brien created for the project that was stolen from him…

Here Willis O’Brien’s detailed sketch depicts six panels with different concepts for Frankenstein’s Monster, with human figures drawn in-between the panels for scale comparison…

I AM LEGEND

Ridley Scott planned to make his version of I AM LEGEND in the late 90s. This take on the Richard Matheson story would have starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was going to be a sophisticated, dark, artsy and psychological film with minimal dialogue but, unfortunately, the $100 million budget kept climbing and the studio, Warner Brothers, shut it down and Scott went off to direct his hit film GLADIATOR instead.

One of the artists Scott worked with on I AM LEGEND, to help visualise the film, was Sylvain Despretz. Here are some of his concepts for the Hemocytes: humanoid creatures that resembled zombies…

HIERO’S JOURNEY

Yes – this is another never-made Jim Danforth project! This would have been a Columbia film, based on a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel written by American writer Sterling Lanier, but it was not put into production.

Here we see a beautifully-painted piece of concept art depicting a lizard-riding huntress…

Okay, let’s finish this article with two more examples of concept artwork from Ray Harryhausen.

This is his drawing for an unmade adaptation of H.G. Wells’ FOOD OF THE GODS…

And here’s Ray Harryhausen’s concept drawing for the unproduced lost world movie VALLEY OF THE MIST, from 1950…