Creative differences with Carr soon arose when Schumacher wanted the film to feature extensive flashbacks of the dancers as children, to dramatize the moment when they heard the call of the stage.
[1] On October 1, 1991, the Los Angeles Times reported that Schumacher would no longer be directing the TV docudrama And the Band Played On, which was adapted from Randy Shilts's 1987 novel.
[5][6] In 1996, Schumacher was set to direct the film adaptation of John Grisham's novel The Runaway Jury, which was expected to enter production in October the following year with a cast of Sean Connery, Gwyneth Paltrow and Edward Norton.
On April 14, 1999, it was reported that Schumacher had been attached to direct an adaptation of Stephen Dobyns' Church of the Dead Girls for Good Machine and Universal Pictures, with Doug Wright writing the script.
On February 24, 2002, Schumacher was hired by Francis Ford Coppola to adapt Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road with Billy Crudup as Sal Paradise and Colin Farrell as Dean Moriarty.
On April 2, 2003, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Schumacher was negotiating to develop and direct a screen version of Patricia Cornwell's Cruel and Unusual for Columbia Pictures.
[21] On November 17, 2008, Mark Swift and Damian Shannon was attached to rewrite Inland Saints to reflect Schumacher's post-apocalyptic, action horror direction for the film.
On June 27, 2011, Schumacher was in talks to direct the pilot of Adam Mazer's television adaptation of the Susanna Moore novel The Big Girls for HBO,[25] which didn't materialize.