5 Fantasy Movies in Production Limbo

The Power of the Dark Crystal

If you were a kid raised on The Mup­pet Show in the 1970s and early 80s, it was inevitable that you saw The Dark Crys­tal, Jim Hen­son and Brian Froud’s epic 1982 fan­tasy movie. Although many kids were admit­tedly ter­ri­fied by it, there were some, like me, who loved The Dark Crys­tal and to this day have a spe­cial place in our hearts for movies star­ring pup­pets. So when it was announced back in 2005 that there would be a sequel, Froudian fans every­where rejoiced, reliv­ing our fond­est Gelfling memories.

But going on four years later with very few offi­cial updates, we’re start­ing to get pretty appre­hen­sive. The lat­est offi­cial word from The Jim Hen­son Com­pany came in Jan­u­ary 2008, assur­ing us the movie was “deep in devel­op­ment” and that they’re “com­mit­ted to it as ever.” How­ever, there has since been major plot changes, a con­stant turnover of direc­tors, and lit­tle to no offi­cial pro­mo­tion. I and every other fan will be shocked if this movie makes it out by 2009.

Ender’s Game

Some­what of a joke amongst book nerds and sci­ence fic­tion fans, the Ender’s Game movie has become pretty much anal­o­gous to hell freez­ing over. Plagued by com­pli­ca­tions from the start, the film adap­ta­tion of Orson Scott Card’s awe-inspiring 1977 novel Ender’s Game has under­gone sev­eral major screen­play rewrites, direc­tor changes, and financ­ing issues. Indeed, screen­play rights have been aban­doned by Warner Bros. and with­held from Fox as well as sev­eral major direc­tors, whose visions Card did not agree with. Apart from the pre-production set­backs, the film must also con­tend with the inevitable (and expen­sive) prob­lems of fea­tur­ing a huge amount of spe­cial effects, sophis­ti­cated child actors, and of course, liv­ing up to all the fans’ extremely high expectations.

At the time of this writ­ing, no stu­dios have yet picked up the rights. But Card remains opti­mistic the film will find the right stu­dio and direc­tor, and refuses to com­pro­mise his vision. That’s both good and bad news for us fans of the Ender­verse, who will ulti­mately be rewarded with a much bet­ter qual­ity film, but must wait a long, long time for it.

Alice

A movie based on a com­puter game based on Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land? Sounds con­vo­luted, but there are plenty of fans and gamers anx­iously await­ing this film adap­ta­tion of pop­u­lar PC game Alice, the dark and some­what twisted re-invention of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land from cre­ative game designer Amer­i­can McGee.

Unfor­tu­nately for us fans, pro­duc­tion on this movie has come to a grind­ing halt. After changes at Uni­ver­sal, Mar­cus Nis­pel no longer direct­ing, and Sarah Michelle Gel­lar no longer play­ing Alice, pro­ducer Scott Faye is back to square one, and a new script is in the works. Gel­lar has chalked it up to being “the vic­tim of regime change in the stu­dio.”  But one has to won­der if this film project isn’t already over­shad­owed by the announce­ment that Tim Bur­ton will make an eerily sim­i­lar grown-up vision of Alice in Won­der­land him­self (nat­u­rally star­ring Johnny Depp is the Mad Hat­ter)? As a huge fan of Lewis Carroll’s orig­i­nal book, I’m of course excited by the prospect of either movie, but it doesn’t look as though Amer­i­can McGee’s ver­sion will hap­pen any­time soon.

Artemis Fowl

Poor Artemis Fowl fans.  They’ve been await­ing this movie for years now, after it was orig­i­nally announced way back in 2001.  Numer­ous rea­sons are spec­u­lated to have caused the seri­ous delay, par­tic­u­larly  a series of con­flicts between Dis­ney and Mira­max over rights own­er­ship.  How seri­ous has the delay been?  Seri­ous enough for IMDB to com­pletely remove Artemis Fowl from its list­ings (go ahead, try to find it).

But sup­pos­edly the dis­pute has since been resolved, and author Eoin Colfer is said to have fin­ished the movie’s script, which will be a com­bi­na­tion of the first two books in the series.  Yet offi­cial updates on the film’s sta­tus have been few and far between at best.  Will fans have to wait until 2010 (or beyond) to see Artemis Fowl on the big screen?

The Sub­tle Knife

This one absolutely breaks my heart, but I’m afraid The Sub­tle Knife, the sec­ond book of Philip Pullman’s amaz­ing His Dark Mate­ri­als tril­ogy, won’t be hit­ting the­aters any­time soon, if ever.

When the movie adap­ta­tion of Pullman’s first book, The Golden Com­pass, failed to meet U.S. box office expec­ta­tions despite its gen­er­ally pos­i­tive crit­i­cal recep­tion, stu­dio execs effec­tively pulled the plug on its sequel.  Per­haps The Golden Com­pass’ $180 mil­lion price tag (the most expen­sive New Line Cin­ema film ever) had more to do with its fail­ure than actual box office returns–worldwide, The Golden Com­pass took in over $380 mil­lion.  But New Line had already washed its hands of the U.S. com­mer­cial flop by the time its suc­cess was realized.

So where does that leave the fate of The Sub­tle Knife?  Despite pro­ducer Deb­o­rah Forte’s desire to con­tinue mak­ing these films, so much time has already passed, it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a sequel involv­ing the same cast (espe­cially child actress Dakota Blue Richards, who did an amaz­ing job as Lyra Belaqua).  Not to men­tion how hard it would be to keep the pro­duc­tion visu­ally con­sis­tent if taken on by another stu­dio.  That’s too bad for us fans of the books, as well as every­one who never read the book and were left feel­ing con­fused as hell by the first film’s ending.