Tim Burton's unrealized projects
During a career that has spanned over 30 years, Tim Burton has worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction.
[3] After the 1985 film, Burton was offered the opportunity to direct Big Top Pee-wee,[4] but had no interest and was already working on his own pet project, Beetlejuice.
During the production of Edward Scissorhands (1990), in which Price portrayed the inventor, Burton conceived the idea of making an independent documentary film on the actor,[8] using the working title Conversations with Vincent.
[9] With self-financing from his own production company, Burton shot the film in black-and-white over a three-day period at the Vincent Price Gallery in East Los Angeles College in April 1991.
[8] Beginning in the late 1980s, new wave rock band Sparks attempted to make the Japanese manga Mai, the Psychic Girl into a musical, with interest from Burton[11] and Carolco Pictures,[12] who purchased the film rights in August 1991.
Carolco hoped Burton would start production in 1992, but he chose to work on The Nightmare Before Christmas and Ed Wood for Touchstone Pictures.
[15] The release of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, a radio musical by Sparks, in August 2009, was informed by the six years the band spent trying to get their Mai, the Psychic Girl produced.
[16] During pre-production of The Addams Family (1991), Burton was considered and approached to direct the film by producer Scott Rudin, but was unable to accept the position due to his commitment to Batman Returns.
[21] Before Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park was published, Hollywood studios were highly interested in purchasing the film rights.
This included Warner Bros. and Burton, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Richard Donner, and 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante.
When Warner Bros. Pictures agreed to produce Dennis the Menace in 1993, Production President Terry Semel wanted Burton to direct.
[44] Burton considered directing Go Baby Go, a beach film in the style of filmmaker Russ Meyer, with a screenplay by Jonathan Gems.
"[1][45][46] In 1995, Burton was reportedly set to collaborate with directors Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola on an anthology series for HBO based on Weird Tales, a collection of horror short stories written by the likes of H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch.
Burton signed on with a pay-or-play contract of $5 million and Warner Bros. set a theatrical release date for the summer of 1998, the 60th anniversary of the character's debut in Action Comics.
Sandra Bullock, Courteney Cox and Julianne Moore had been approached for Lois Lane, while Chris Rock was cast as Jimmy Olsen.
[52]: 197 For budgetary reasons, Warner Bros. ordered another rewrite from Dan Gilroy, delayed the film and ultimately put it on hold in April 1998.
[53] Burton has depicted the experience as a difficult one, citing differences with producer Jon Peters and the studio, stating, "I basically wasted a year.
"[58] When the Goosebumps film was in early production and was going to be made by 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks, Burton was originally going to produce it in 1998, with the option to direct.
[59] However, the project fell through and was later sold to Sony Pictures Entertainment, resulting in the 2015 film directed by Rob Letterman and composed by Tim's friend Danny Elfman.
Burton developed a script for a remake of the 1963 science fiction B-film X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes with writer Bryan Goluboff, but it went unproduced.
franchise, with Jim Carrey portraying Robert Ripley and a script by Ed Wood scribes Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski; the film ran over budget however, and was shelved by Paramount Pictures.
[64] Burton moved on to direct Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,[65][66] and on October 23, 2008, Chris Columbus took over the Ripley's Believe It or Not!
The first is the opening theme for "Gotham City" and the entry of Batman with his tortured solo "The Graveyard Shift"; followed by "The Joker's Song (Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?
)", "The Catwoman's Song (I Need All The Love I Can Get)", "We're Still The Children We Once Were" (the climactic sequence) and "In The Land Of The Pig The Butcher Is King", sung by the corrupt blood-suckers ruling Gotham, covered on the Meat Loaf album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose.
Director Acker has also mentioned the possibility of a sequel being made because of the lack of darker animated films, claiming that everything is G- and PG-rated with little to no dark elements.
[85] In March 2010, it was announced that Illumination Entertainment in partnership with Universal Pictures, had acquired the underlying rights to the Addams Family drawings.
[89] By October 2017, Conrad Vernon had been hired to direct the film, which he will also produce along with Berman and Alex Schwartz, based on a screenplay written by Pettler, with revisions by Matt Lieberman.
[96] Stage adaptation Walt Disney Theatrical was in early talks with Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton to develop Alice in Wonderland as a Broadway musical.
Woolverton authored the screenplay for Disney's The Lion King and is also the Tony Award-nominated book writer of Beauty and the Beast, Aida, and Lestat.
[120] On September 9, 2023, Burton commented to The Independent that he had "a weird idea" for another project with Paul Reubens in what would have been their fourth collaboration after working together in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman Returns and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
