Roland Emmerich's unrealized projects

In 1990, Emmerich was hired by Carolco Pictures to direct the science fiction film Isobar, originally written by Jim Uhls and previously titled The Train.

[1] The film, budgeted at $90 million, was set to be produced by Joel Silver and star Sylvester Stallone and Kim Basinger, with Emmerich asking Dean Devlin to rewrite the script for him.

[2] On February 25, 1998, it was reported that Emmerich and Devlin had bought the rights to the project and were moving it to Sony Pictures, where the duo had signed a production deal.

[7] In 1994, Emmerich and Dean Devlin got involved with Bethesda Softworks to develop the video game The 10th Planet, which was scheduled to be released in October 1997, but got canceled.

[17] On March 20, 2002, Emmerich was in talks to direct Alien Prison for Columbia Pictures, which he would also co-produce alongside Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher of Red Wagon Productions, with the most recent draft being written by Andrew W.

[18] In October 2003, it was announced that Emmerich would direct Tut for Columbia Pictures and producer Mark Gordon, from a screenplay by Sean O'Keefe and Will Staples.

[21] The project reportedly involved "an impeached president who refuses to leave the White House" and "an FBI agent [who] is rushing to discover the truth behind a top-level conspiracy that threatens to undermine the Constitution.

[34] In 2016, Emmerich stated that he was reluctant to take on the project anytime soon due to the technology not being advanced enough at that time to be able to accurately portray the faces of the historical figures depicted in the film.

[37] When asked about his dream project during a panel at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con, Emmerich singled out Happy Birthday, Mr. President as his favorite script, but said that his efforts to make the film had been consistently hamstrung by various legal issues and concerns.

[32] On April 30, 2013, it was announced that Emmerich was adapting the story of British lieutenant T. E. Lawrence in the form of a six-hour television miniseries with Fremantle, with Rod Lurie and Clive Bradley set to write the project.

[39] In 2022, Emmerich told The Hollywood Reporter that he was still working on it and that he had found an English writer to replace Lurie and Bradley, but did not specify who, and that together they were developing ten episodes in total.

[42] On April 3, 2014, it was announced that Emmerich and his Centropolis Entertainment company had acquired the rights to an untitled action thriller spec script by Nicolas Wright and James A.

[43] On April 28, 2014, Emmerich's Centropolis Entertainment acquired film rights for an adaptation of the historical epic Maya Lord, about Gonzalo Guerrero.

[46] On December 15, 2016, Emmerich was in talks to direct the film adaptation of Blake Crouch's sci-fi thriller novel Dark Matter for Sony Pictures, with Matt Tolmach producing.