Steven Spielberg’s Night Skies, Stanley Kubrick’s Childhood’s End, Philip Kaufman’s Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, Kevin Smith’s Six Million Dollar Man, Tim Burton’s Superman Lives, James Cameron’s Alien 5...

These are just some of the legendary unmade films covered in this groundbreaking book. This fully updated edition also reveals the fascinating details of the movies that nearly were: what would James Cameron’s version of Spider-Man, or Terry Gilliam’s Watchmen have been like? How close did Ridley Scott come to directing I Am Legend starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and why was Nicolas Cage paid $20 million for not playing Superman?

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" An essential purchase ... read it and weep." - Empire

"Wonderful... Every sci-fi fan should own this" - Sci-fi-online.com

"An essential chronicle of broken promises" - Hotdog

"These are films I wish I could have seen ... Hughes's research is solid ... it's sobering stuff." 'Moriarty', Ain't It Cool News

"Every so often a book comes along that demands to be read at one or two sittings at the most... miss this one at your peril." - Starlog

"In-depth blow-by-blow analysis ... this has it all ... a must-read" - IGN Filmforce

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by HR Giger

Introduction

01 Destination Hell
How Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination Took a Jaunt to Hollywood

02 A Difficult Childhood
The Unmanifested Destiny of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End

03 Where No One Has Gone Before
Philip Kaufman's Star Trek: Planet of the Titans and Other Star Trek Voyages Never Taken

04 Close, But No Cigar-Shaped Object
How the Evil Aliens of Steven Spielberg's Night Skies Were Replaced By a Very Different Extra-Terrestrial

05 The Tourist Trap
How The Tourist Got Lost in 'Development Hell'

06 Profits Of Dune
Unrealised Visions of Frank Herbert's Seminal Science Fiction Fable

07 Twin Freaks
Sci-Fi From Another Place: David Lynch's Ronnie Rocket and One Saliva Bubble

08 Alienated
In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream. In Hollywood, They Can Hear You - They Just Don't Take Any Notice

09 Lights, Camera, No "Action!"
Even the Self-Styled "King of the World" Couldn't Untangle Spider-Man's Web

10 This Is Legend
How I Am Legend Rose From the Dead

11 Who Watches The Watchmen?
How the Greatest Graphic Novel of Them All Almost Confounded Hollywood

12 Fantastic Journey
Why Getting The Fantastic Four to the Big Screen Proved a Real Stretch for Hollywood

13 The Silver Screen
Silver Surfer Goes to Tinsel Town

14 The Death Of Superman Lives
Why It Took Twenty Years, Nine Writers, Four Directors and Hundreds of Millions of Dollars to Make Superman Return

15 The Six Billion Dollar Movie
The Bionic Man Almost Gets a Big Screen Makeover

16 Don't Panic
Twenty-Five Years of the Making of the Movie of the Book of the Radio Show of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

17 Thunderbird's Aren't Go
Why the Live Action Thunderbirds Movie Came With Strings Attached

18 Lost In Space
How Dead Star Disappeared Into a Black Hole, Only to Re-Emerge as Supernova

19 Island Of Lost Souls
The Strange and Terrible Story Behind Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr Moreau

20 No Limits
How a Movie Version of the Classic Sci-Fi Show The Outer Limits Proved Beyond the Limits of MGM

21 Get Carter!
John Carter of Mars' Century-Long Journey to the Big Screen

Afterword by Harry Knowles

Acknowledgements and Index of Quotations

Selected Bibliography

Index of Names and Film Titles

Science Fiction · Miscellaneous Film
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