Movie fans, brace yourself for more bad news than you can possibly deal with. Following the acquisition of Fox, Disney has cancelled a significant chunk of the studio’s slate - basically everything in development their execs didn’t like the look of.
This totals literally hundreds of movies, so we’re not going to list them all. Instead, here’s the most intriguing films we’ll never get to see. Can someone fire up the 20th Century Fox music before we begin?
Flash Gordon - Written and directed by Taika Waititi, this reboot of the ‘80s sci-fi flick about a buff dude who meets loads of weird people in space is dead. It was probably going to star Chris Hemsworth as the titular Flash (this is pure speculation, but come on!), and its cancellation basically means we’ve lost a future cult classic.
Cary Fukunaga’s war film - this modern-day war movie’s plot will probably never be known, but the fact that it was to be written and directed by the Bond 25 helmer makes us super sad we’ll never see it.
Matt Reeves’ heist movie - the same goes for the bank robbery movie from The Batman’s Matt Reeves, except this one was written by Matt Charman, who did the astonishing Bridge Of Spies.
Chances are this would have been a complex and clever original thriller for adults. But loads of those are being made, so that’s fine… *checks notes*... Oh no.
Ben Affleck’s McDonald’s movie - Inspired by the true story of a McDonald’s security man who stole winning McDonald's Monopoly tickets to sell to the highest bidder.
Ben Affleck would have directed, and presumably starred (he usually does), with Deadpool’s Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick penning the script. Considering Affleck’s track record, this had Oscar potential written all over it.
Magic: The Gathering - Meanwhile, this one could have been the next Game Of Thrones, Lord Of The Rings… Or Warcraft. So maybe it’s for the best it’s has been cancelled, but still, the script is from Bryan Cogman, who wrote ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ (aka the only Thrones S8 episode everyone agreed on), who has been snapped up by Amazon for its LOTR series, so it must have something going for it. We’ll never know.
Toymageddon - A Small Soldiers reboot from Justin Lin of Fast Five fame? Sign us up! You just know this would have starred The Rock as some kind of weird action man figure.
It’s not all bad news, though. The list of cancelled films also includes The Sweetest Fig (an evil man is given a delicious fig which has the power to make dreams come true), The Three Misfortunes of Geppetto (a Pinocchio prequel, following Geppetto, from the director of Baywatch), Play-Doh (a live-action adaptation of *checks notes* some clay), and Steelskin (a gritty Rumplestilskin reboot), and McClane (that Die Hard prequel set 30 years before the original), all of which sound like Alan Partridge pitches.
You can read the full list of cancelled films here, but it really does make for some sobering reading.
But, hey, at least we’ve got that Home Alone remake on the way? Thanks Disney!
