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I have a recent obsession with things that have never been completed, or that have been completed and for some reason never released.

It usually turns out that the completed things were never released because they were mostly just so terrible the people involved thought it too embarrassing to admit to.

Such is the rumour surrounding Jerry Lewis's last film, The Day The Clown Cried

According to the few who’ve seen it this comedy about a concentration camp clown is every bit as fascinatingly terrible as anyone could hope.

The movie began life as a somewhat serious screenplay about a failed circus clown imprisoned by the Nazis. Shunned by his fellow inmates, he sates his ego by entertaining the imprisoned Jewish children, and, at the film’s end, he’s coerced into leading his young audience into an Auschwitz gas chamber. Envisioning it as his leap from buffoonish comedy to scathing drama, Lewis directed and starred in the movie, seeing it through to rough-cut completion despite health problems, actor walkoffs, vanishing funds, and legal threats from the production company.

But then you also have the opposite. Something that promises a departure from the studio's normal output that it frightens them into locking it away.

Supposedly this is what's covered in the documentary The Sweatbox. A film that has been buried in the vaults by Disney because it tells the story of one of their greatest might've beens and how it was scuppered by the giant's own executive interference.

The film was called, Kingdom in the Sun and promised to feature a sun swallowing demon as mentioned in this breif synopsis of the aforementioned documentary.

Disney’s often mocked in ways both clever and lazy, but it’s rarely done with The Mouse’s own blessing. A documentary called The Sweatbox might come the closest. When Sting was tapped to write songs for an in-progress Disney film called Kingdom of the Sun, his wife, director Trudie Styler, came along to film a behind-the-scenes special about the movie. That was 1997. In the years that followed, the film’s story was shredded, director Roger Allers quit, Sting’s songs were dumped, and a fairly dark film about prince-and-pauper switcheroos and a sun-devouring demon became the goofy road movie we know as 2002’s The Emperor’s New Groove. And Styler captured all of it in The Sweatbox, itself named after the room where in-progress Disney films are reviewed and “re-tooled” by executives

There's a more detailed list of other unreleased projects on this website here:-

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/08/the_10_most_amazing_unreleased_things_ever_made.php?page=2

If anybody knows of any other unfinished or unreleased works of any kind then please feel free to share.

Posted: 03-03-2009 19:14 Post subject:

Ever heard of a guy called Orson Welles?!

Posted: 03-03-2009 21:37 Post subject:

The Black Album by Prince. Recalled by the Artist himself for being 'too evil' and having been made on the sly by 'Spooky Electric', one of the Alter Egos Prince shares his body with.

Posted: 04-03-2009 11:34 Post subject:

Posted: 04-03-2009 11:46 Post subject:

I'd recommend anyone to get a copy of The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made by David Hughes. There's a whole tranche of stuff that was planned, but canned, in there. A very interesting read!

Posted: 05-03-2009 09:20 Post subject:

Let's hope this one makes it....

Posted: 09-03-2009 14:03 Post subject:

Pink Floyd attempted to follow up the mega-selling Dark Side of the Moon in a unique way...

Posted: 09-03-2009 19:20 Post subject:

That sounds pretty funky. Not sure it would have been good on the ears.

I read in this months SFX that an unpublished John Wyndham novel called A Plan for Chaos is finally to be published. It's something to do with cloned Nazis trying to make a comeback after WW2

Posted: 10-03-2009 03:50 Post subject:

Good stuff. John Wyndham was a good writer.

Posted: 10-03-2009 15:33 Post subject:

I recall reading back in the 1970's that Brian Jones had been working on some new songs / music after leaving the Rolling Stones and prior to his death. Supposedly he was jamming and / or recording on his own project with other rock artists of the period, of whom I only remember Jack Bruce being mentioned.

I've always wondered what sort of songs / music Jones was doing during that brief period of 'solo work'.

Posted: 09-04-2009 20:10 Post subject:

Posted: 15-04-2009 16:15 Post subject:

Speaking of games, I remember that in the mid 1980s, a super-game called 'Psyclapse & Bandersnatch' was winging its way towards the 8-bit wonders we knew and loved, and that it was so good, all other games paled by comparison. I distinctly recall the teaser ads in Your Computer - a group of programmers huddled round a glowing screen, working their way deep into the night, the desktop and monitor bestrewn with empty takeaway cartons.

But it never happened, of course - the company producing it (Imagine) went bust, and it was later revealed that P&B was little more than vapourware - existing only as a couple of sketches on paper. A potted history of the super-game that never was can be found at

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandersnatch_(video_game)[/url]

Posted: 23-04-2009 21:07 Post subject:

What a great topic!

It is weird when projects sound good, but just mysteriously disappear.

One I've wondered about is (a short film) Psychotica - a nicely Fortean theme, with a great (and topical) cast (Simon Pegg, Jack Davenport, Helen Baxendale and supposed to be released in 2007. So far, nowt...

http://www.inkdigital.co.uk/seyret/film/psychotica-trailer.html

weird

Posted: 24-04-2009 07:30 Post subject:

I write music every now and then and two years ago, my friend and I were commissioned to write a piece for a soft-porn film. A classy production, very Eyes Wide Shut. We produced a great piece of music, got handsomely paid and then the film was never released, much to my disgust.

I still think it would have been excellent to see somebodies hairy little arse bobbing up and down while my silky smooth tones serenade the lovers.

And another...I've mentioned before here that Alistair Macleans HMS Ulysses has never materialised even though the film rights were snatched up when the book became a huge success.

Posted: 07-05-2009 08:43 Post subject:

You have to ask yourself what kind of troubles stop a soft-porn film from being released. Even if it's just straight onto Channel Five.

On another note I've just read about Nick Cave's rejected script for Gladiator 2 being released onto the interweb. Apparently it deals with the death of Maximus at the end of the last film by having him meet the roman gods, being reunited with his murdered son and then being granted eternal life. The character then appears, Highlander-esque, throughout such historical events as WW2 and Vietnam, finally ending with him working at the modern day Pentagon.

Given the poetic pretentions and hammy seriousness of the first film it's not surprising that the high fantasy of this script, co-written with Russel Crowe, wasn't optioned. Although some might say that it has found its way onto the web as a means of testing its reception...