During his long career, English film director Tony Scott had worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction.
[8] According to Quentin Tarantino, Scott had initially asked to direct his script Reservoir Dogs (1992), but had to settle for True Romance (1993) instead after a buyout from producer William Lustig's company.
[9] Scott's involvement with Tom Mix and Pancho Villa goes as far back as June 1993, when The New York Times reported he was to direct the project for TriStar Pictures.
"This is Lawrence of Arabia (1962) meets The Wild Bunch (1969), a huge film with trains, cavalry, thousands of soldiers in uniform and on horseback," Scott said.
[12] Scott was initially signed to direct the heist film Money Train, and had developed the script with writer Doug Richardson, even going as far as to go "undercover" with a Subway Crime Suppression Unit for research.
He wanted to shoot the film entirely in the New York subway systems, but the head of the Transit Authority told them that he must have final script and casting approvable in order for them to gain authorisation.
Scott ultimately chose not to stay with the film, and, instead, Joseph Ruben was brought on to direct, who, according to Richardson, had him "replaced by a DMV line of writers who slowly dismantled the movie [he'd] so carefully constructed".
In June 1998, it was reported that Scott Free Productions had struck a deal to develop a film about an unnamed real-life United States Navy pilot who became a highly paid repo man that went after custom-made jet planes.
[19] Scott was the original director signed on for John le Carré's The Tailor of Panama for Columbia Pictures, which he was attached to film in 1998.
[19] Also in 1998, the feature adaptation of Elmore Leonard's thriller novel Killshot was being developed by Miramax Films and producer Lawrence Bender for Scott to direct and for Robert De Niro and Quentin Tarantino to possibly star.
[20] In June 1999, it was reported that Scott was developing a film project titled Take Down with Jerry Bruckheimer producing and Henry Bean serving as screenwriter.
[29] Scott was in the running to direct Spider-Man (2002), the first film adaptation based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, alongside Tim Burton, M. Night Shyamalan, Chris Columbus and Roland Emmerich before Sam Raimi was hired.
[39] [40] According to Kirk Ewing, a friend of Sam and Dan Houser who worked with Rockstar Games on State of Emergency, the Houser brothers were offered $5 million to make a film based on their Grand Theft Auto video games in late 2001 around the release of Grand Theft Auto III, with Scott meant to direct and rapper Eminem meant to star.
[41] In July 2002, Scott announced that he intended to follow up directing Man on Fire (2004) with a film called American Caesar at Universal, from a script by William Nicholson.
[52] In June 2009, Scott was announced to collaborate with his brother Ridley and his nephew Luke on Purefold, a Blade Runner-related project consisting on an episodic webseries examining conceptions of empathy.
[54] In October 2009, it was announced that Scott was attached to direct a biopic about Chippendales co-founder and convicted arsonist, racketeer, and murderer Somen "Steve" Banerjee.
[66][67] The Los Angeles Times reported that Shia LaBeouf would star in the project, with William Monahan and Lorenzo di Bonaventura serving as screenwriter and producer respectively.
[69][70] Also in August 2010, it was reported that Scott was to direct a film adaptation of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's Nemesis for 20th Century Fox.
[83][84][85][86] Following Scott's death in 2012, others were slated to direct the film, including Antoine Fuqua,[87][88] Doug Liman,[89][90] Joe Carnahan[91] and Brian Kirk.