5 finished movies Hollywood refused to let us see

I am Jason Kleeberg, this is Force Five, and this week, on the recommendation of my best friend Moose, I went to check out Coyote versus ACME. It’s fantastic - bring your family, if you don’t have a family, bring your dog, it’s a great time for all ages. The fact that it’s good is a big surprise, not because of the Looney Tunes, they’re always good, but because WB decided they’d rather claim a $30 million dollar tax loss than release a movie that a lot of people worked really hard on. Luckily, that bitch David Zaslov let someone else buy it, so shoutout to Ketchup Entertainment for both having the worst film production company name and for saving this film from an infinite shelf life. As I say these words, Coyote Vs. Acme is Ketchup’s highest grossing movie to date, so a big congratulations there, you’re truly the bestest mensch.

I was going to do a 5 reasons video for this one but one, it doesn’t really need my opinion, and two, my opinion is that it’s amazing. Instead, I’d like to shine some light on some other recent projects that were filmed, finished, and for one reason or another, were never released and we’ll probably never see them. By recent, you won’t see The Day the Clown Cried on this list. For this video I’m going to be covering only films that were either finished or basically finished, I think there’s a whole other video I could do about films that were started and then never finished.

Okay, first up, that bitch David Zaslov shelved a few other WB movies that were all ready to go, one of them being Batgirl. Directed by Adil and Bilal, who also did the last two Bad Boys movies, and written by Christina Hodson, who wrote Birds of Prey and The Flash, this one looked like it was in good hands. Zaslov said the reason was that it just didn’t work and that they wanted DC films to be big theatrical event films, yes, the same company that put out Black Adam and two Shazam and Aquaman movies. It cost 90 million dollars and would have been the first big screen Latina female super hero with Leslie Grace under the mask and it also starred J.K. Simmons, Michael Keaton, Brendan Fraser and Ivory Aquino as Alysia Yeoh, who would have been the first transgender character in a DC film. I hope we get to see this someday.

Next up is more of a curiosity than anything else based solely on the cast, and that’s the film God’s Behaving Badly from 2013, the directorial debut by Marc Turtletaub who went on to make the fantastic films Little Miss Sunshine and Safety Not Guaranteed. This movie is about a young mortal couple played by Alicia Silverstone and Ebon Moss-Bachrach who encounter a group of Greek gods living in New York City. If having Cher and Richie from The Bear didn’t fill your cup, check out the rest of this cast. Christopher Walken played Zeus, Sharon Stone played Aphrodite, John Turturro, Edie Falco, Oliver Platt, another Bear guy, Rosie Perez and Phylicia Rashad. Now, this one did get a public screening in 2013 at the Rome Film Festival and was reviewed so poorly that it was never released.

Next up is another directorial debut, Jamie Foxx’s film All-Star Weekend, which was supposed to be released in 2018 and was shelved due to, quote, trying to break open the sensitive corners with Robert Downey Jr. playing a Mexican man.”, which I think means it just wasn’t that funny. According to the Internet, the film is about two truck drivers who love basketball and they love Lebron and Steph Curry. They win tickets to the NBA all star game and meet a beautiful woman on their way to the big game, but after many twists and turns, the guys find themselves and their heroes in a precarious life or death situation. It starred Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Piven as the truck drivers but also had Eva Longoria, Ken Jeong, Gerard Butler, Benecio Del Toro, rap’s biggest sell out Snoop Dogg, along with other rappers like The Game, DJ Khaled and French Montana. Sounds like this one just wasn’t funny and didn’t know how to read the room. Oh, speaking of not being able to read, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is also in this.

Next up we’ve got the film The Long Home, which was an adaptation of the William Gay book from 1999. James Franco directed this and starred as Dallas Hardin, a corrupt businessman who owns his small Tennessee town. He murders a guy in 1932 and then hires the dead guy’s son later on to build his house. The film also starred Josh Hutcherson, Tim Blake Nelson, Zoe Levin, Courtney Love, been a long time since I’ve heard that name, Giancarlo Esposito, Josh Hartnett, Timothy Hutton, Garret Dillahunt and Ashton Kutcher. Sounds like it could have been a slam dunk…until a female actor accused James Franco of inappropriate sexual conduct during production. How hard is it to just not be weird and creepy guys, come on now.

Last, but certainly not least is Alien Love Triangle, a 2008 comedy-science fiction film that was directed by Danny Boyle. So back in the Miramax days, there was going to be an anthology film that would have had three, half hour movies. When it was being planned, one of the Weinstein’s decided that instead of having three half hour movies, they should have three regular length movies instead of an anthology. One was Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic, and we know he didn’t have a good experience working for those guys, one was Imposter, which we couldn’t give away at the video store, that one starred Gary Sinise and all I remember about it was the cover, and the last one was Alien Love Triangle. It was about a scientist who creates a teleportation device and when he goes home to his wife to share the news, he learns she’s from outer space. This leads to a string of unusual events where beings from space come to visit him and his friends. Sounds really bad but it starred Kenneth Branaugh, Courteney Cox and Heather Graham. That’s a love triangle I’d watch. I’d just have to like…put my hand up to cover ol’ Kenny.

Got any interesting unreleased movies that you know about? Let me know down in the comments! Down below you’ll find the links to buy shirts and my other socials. 

Life is short. Spend it with the people, and the movies, that you love.