Under Exposed! 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, fun to read, fascinating to think of

Given that Sam Raimi is riding the Doctor Strange wave, it’s worth reminding audiences of Burst. That was his 3-D film that he produced about spontaneous combustion. It’s got all the makings of a cult classic and was never made, but sounds ridiculously awesome. That’s just one of the films featured in Under Exposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made. Justice League: Mortal, directed by Mad Max legend George Miller is another film that inspires the mind as to what it could’ve been.

Under Exposed! is a fascinating, inside-baseball look at the production of movies, sprinkled with a side dash of pop culture. There is a project that any movie fan will find in the book. Its story will make you salivate with the excellence that it could’ve been, were it not for the timing of some other film, budget issues, or actor’s schedules.

Even as I write this I find myself distracted by some other fascinating story. This one was based from one of horror’s most beloved authors starring Tom Cruise and directed by Oscar-nominated director Guillermo del Toro. Moreover, At The Mountains of Madness, was derived from a Lovecraft story about the origin of evil, had James Cameron involved, and could use del Toro’s already proven track record with monsters and creativity.

It would be a rated R force with the violence and scares that Lovecraft fans wanted and from Universal, a studio that didn’t mind swimming in that side of the pool. However, the time was late 2010 all eyes were on Prometheus, an expensive R-rated film that made money but didn’t produce the returns that studios had hoped or wanted. Thus, the project was shelved, Pacific Rim was nigh and the cinematic Lovecraft desert would continue to run rampant.

John Hughes had one more film in his coming of age cannon starring Matthew Broderick and Molly Ringwald that was called Oil and Vinegar. John Carpenter had a couple of projects that sounded fabulous, both starring Kurt Russell.  Shadow Company was about zombie POWs whose bodies are returned stateside and Escape From From Earth, which would’ve been the third entry in the Snake Plisken trilogy.  Somewhere in Under Exposed! is a movie that might provide readers with that reason to go back in time and correct a cinematic mistake that occurred, due to it never happening.

To really get into Under Exposed! one needs to enjoy movies, business, pop culture or at least be aware of one of them. However, even if someone has a mild curiosity about those subjects the book does a great job of presenting each project in a manner that’s approachable and incredibly interesting. Each film is provided with around five pages and includes a marketing poster for how the film would’ve been marketed. The text is presented through the same manner with paragraphs written in a fade-in, flashback, action and cut, storytelling mode. This lets audiences see how the project was thought of, why it might’ve been a great idea, the background into setting it up, and why it fell apart.

There are dozens upon dozens of movie trivia that’s sprinkled in with each project. Did you know that Spielberg almost directed one of our favorite films, Three Amigos!, ? His version would’ve starred Bill Murray, Robin Williams and Steve Martin. Is that the film that makes you want to go back and use your time machine? Under Exposed! passes the potato chip and cat video test, in that you can’t read just one. You thumb through the book and before you know it you’re reading about some Brad Pitt project that sounds fascinating.

Under Exposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made is by Joshua Hull with a forward by Fred Dekker and available on Abrams Books.

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