“Shockproof Sydney Skate”
Green adapted the novel for director/actor/producer Sidney Pollack. Hailed as the “Catcher in the Rye” for the ’70s, about a young “shockproof” boy who develops a problem when the girl he loves and his mother, a lesbian, develop crushes on each other. No news has evolved on this project since he first talked it up in 2004. The adaptation is probably in a drawer somewhere and Pollack passed away in 2008, but it’s interesting to note filmmakers like Soderbergh, Malick, Pollack and Judd Apatow all noticed Green early on.
“Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles”
A spy novel that Green became attached to as a director according to an interview with author Will Clarke. “Out of the blue, a New Zealand screenwriter, Grant Morris [‘Heroes‘ TV show writer], called to option it. He then got Michael London [‘Sideways‘] attached as the producer who got David Gordon Green to attach as the director. And then to my utter surprise, the three of them set the project up at Paramount Pictures.” It’s possible the author was talking out of his turn because nothing ever turned up here.
“Six Pack”
Yep, a remake of the 1982 comedy “Six Pack” starring Kenny Rogers as a down-and-out race car driver who gets his stock car career back on track thanks to the help of a teenage orphan (a young tomboy-ish Diane Lane) and her five car-crazy young brothers who act as his unlikely pit crew. It was set-up at 20th Century Fox and Green wrote a screenplay, but eventually, the studio went safe, moved on without Green and attached Kevin James to star as the lead.
Untitled Western Project/Untitled Science Fiction Project
Green had a Western project about heroin addicts in the Wild West that he’s “trying to get going” and a science-fiction script that he’s “had [around] for years,” he told Indiewire in 2005. He told Moviehabit the latter project was a “[Andrei] Tarkovsky-esque science fiction that will be three hours long,” that apparently is a vehicle for Paul Rudd (the actor was eventually cast in “Prince Avalanche”). So the Western? “Nobody will finance that shit. I’ve been trying to get that made for ten years,” Green said circa “The Sitter.” “Maybe down the line but I have to be more commercially viable than I am right now.”
“Ice Station Zebra”
Circa “Your Highness,” Green was going remake the 1968 John Sturges thriller “Ice Station Zebra,” in which Rock Hudson and Ernest Borgnine engage in a literal Cold War during an Arctic rescue mission. “I just finished [the] script for Warner Bros. that’s a big military movie,” he told us in 2011. “And I got to go camp out on the arctic circle with the Navy and explore those kind of… you know just the lingo and the politics of what’s going on in the arctic right now so it truly is a passport. Like literally Warner Brothers says, ‘Do you want to get on a jet with the Navy and get on a submarine?’ and you’re like, ‘absofuckinglutely!‘ ” Whatever happened, it didn’t pan out. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie is now on that directing gig.
“Suspiria”
“No, it doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Green told MTV in 2008 about his would-be remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror classic. “But it’s wicked. I love it, plot holes and everything. ‘Suspiria’ is a classic for me. I want to be scared. I want to be afraid.” An Italian producer approached Green about the remake, perhaps knowing his eclectic taste, and he was more than game. Green’s version had Natalie Portman in the lead at one point, but he had to rethink it after the actress starred in psychological horror “Black Swan.”
“I didn’t want to make the Natalie version anymore. So I re-envisioned it,” he said in 2011. So he went back to the source material, a novella called “Mine-Haha” by Frank Wedekind. Christof Gebert a sound production mixer who has worked on many of Green’s films, adapted the work, and the director mounted up a new version with Isabelle Huppert, Janet McTeer, Michael Nyqvist and pre-“Man of Steel” Antje Traue attached. It seemed to be moving forward with a shoot date and everything, but producers got nervous and pulled the plug. “Someone needs to do something very artful with that project,” he said last year noting it was dead with his involvement just months later. “I’m just excited at the thought of making something elegant, and graphic, and classy at a point in the horror genre where everybody’s making films raw, and found-footage. I want something to contrast that, but anybody that’s interested in horror movies has no interest in that right now. At least, not with my involvement. But maybe someone else will do it.” So chalk that one up to creative differences and producers wanting to go the safe route.
“Q”
Just before “The Sitter” hit theatres, Green lined up a gig writing and directing an adaptation of Evan Mandery‘s novel “Q.” The story focuses on a man who is visited by a future version of himself who warns him on his wedding day not to get married to his wife. He listens to himself but spends the rest of his life regretting the decision and tries to fill the void that remains, as future selves continue to advise him. It would’ve been a blend of many genres—sci-fi, drama, romance—but that was pretty much the first and last of any news about that project.
“The Prince Avalanche” Remakes/Hit The Road Jack
Green’s 2013 film “Prince Avalanche” with Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch is a remake of the 2011 Icelandic film “Either Way.” Green didn’t even meet the filmmakers of the original until his version debuted at Sundance last year, but they hit it off so well they concocted some harebrained scheme to keep remaking it over and over again with different versions set in different locations.
“We all conceived of three other very interesting ideas of ways of how to do different [versions],” he said during a Sundance interview for “Prince Avalanche.” His assistant director on the movie, Atilla Salih Yücer] is “Turkish and he wants to remake it in Turkey,” Green said. As for his own remake of the remake? “I want to remake ‘Prince Avalanche’ in Australia with two aggressive ex-prisoners working on the side of the road, but it’s not a comedy,” he said last summer. “It’s called ‘Hit the Road Jack‘ and is more of an action movie where they beat the crap out of each other. It’s more of an aggressive masculine thing because Australia is where all the men live. Men have disappeared across the planet except in Australia.” We’ll see if this ever gets made or if it’s just an idea the filmmaker got rather excited about.
Miscellaneous: the Western, Ronson, Science-Fiction, Medieval
“I could be attached to a million [projects], but I don’t know if anything will ever be made with my name on it. I just want to try and make [films] that are distinctive and play on a realistic ball field where I can be creative.” Believe it or not, there’s even more Green has been linked to. He’s been contemplating directing a horror that his friend and fellow filmmaker Craig Zobel (“Compliance”) wrote. Perhaps to scratch his “Secret Life Of Bees” itch he was set to direct a big-screen adaptation of “Little House On The Prairie” but who knows what happened with that. According to the always unreliable Wikipedia, Green was once attached to a project called “The Legend of Ronson,” but that’s probably apocryphal, because good luck finding details.
Earlier this year it was reported that Green would direct a thriller with Chris Pine called “The Line,” but it seems like that was just a loose idea and not something concrete yet. “I have no idea where that one came from,” he recently said. “I talked to Chris on the phone once about it. He’s cool. And I like that ‘Jack Ryan’ movie.” Lastly, there was also that Barefoot Bandit movie (eventually called “Taking Flight” and later set for Robert Zemeckis), about the real-life case of Colton Harris-Moore, a modern-day Robin Hood (of sorts), who escaped juvenile detention at the age of 18 and became quickly known for an audacious, rogue lifestyle living in the woods of Washington State. “Dustin Lance Black‘s written it and it’s fucking awesome,” Green said in 2011. “I don’t know if I’m going to direct it but we’re investigating all options on it.” But it looks like those options ran out.
Any of these you hope get revived? Let us know below.
