The Lost & Unmade Projects Of Steven Spielberg

“Ghost Soldiers”
Tom Cruise
and Steven Spielberg had been friends for many years by the time they worked on “Minority Report” together, and had mooted various other projects before that happened — Spielberg was originally set to direct “Rain Man,” and they nearly made a superhero movie called “The Mark” (see above). Once they did team up, and had a hit together, they were keen to find another project, which arrived in the form of “Ghost Soldiers.” Based on a best-selling non-fiction book by Hampton Sides, it would have returned Spielberg to World War Two, telling the story of a U.S. Army Ranger mission to rescue survivors of the Bataan Death March from a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines, with the help of local guerillas. Writer Josh Friedman
penned a draft of the script, but the film was seemingly scuppered by John Dahl’s “The Great Raid,” starring James Franco, which told the same story — that film shot in 2002, not long after the announcement of the project, though it wasn’t released until 2005. Cruise, Spielberg, and Friedman instead made “War Of The Worlds” together in 2005.

“Spares”

“Ghost Soldiers” wasn’t the only Spielberg/Cruise project to be considered as a follow-up for “Minority Report,” with another sci-fi movie, “Spares,” also mooted at one point. The film was based on a novel by Michael Marshall Smith, about an ex-cop grieving from the death
of his child, working as a security guard at a farm for clones bred for organ donation, who goes on the run with seven of the clones. Yes, it’s similar in set-up to both “Never Let Me Go” and Michael Bay movie “The Island,” but published in 1998, “Spares” actually pre-dated those two
projects. The rights were snapped up on publication by DreamWorks, and a 2002 issue of Total Film stated that the project was one of a number being considered to reteam Spielberg and Cruise again. It never came to pass, though curiously, just a few years later, the studio did make the similarly-premised “The Island,” likely killing any “Spares” adaptation, with or without Spielberg himself.

“The Rivals”
Some of the projects on this list are ones that seem very much in Spielberg’s wheelhouse — aliens, adventurers, soldiers, etc. But some really aren’t, and “The Rivals” might be first and foremost among them. A spec script by Robin Swicord (who also penned one-time Spielberg projects “ Memoirs Of A Geisha” and “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button”), it told the true story of the theatrical feud between French actress Sarah Bernhardt, once called “the most famous actress the world has ever known,” and her younger Italian rival, Eleanora Duse. Only a director of Spielberg’s stature could have got a film about 19th century actresses hating each other near the start line, but once bought in 2003, the film, to be produced by “American Beauty” team Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, became a priority: Nicole Kidman soon became attached to play Bernhardt, and the film was planned to shoot in late 2004, in between “Munich” and “War Of The Worlds.” The latter seemed a more solid commercial prospect and was bumped up, but ‘Rivals’ remained in development for a while — by 2008, Marion Cotillard had come on board to play Duse. But when DreamWorks and Paramount split, the project stayed at the latter, and little’s been heard of it since.

“The Trial Of The Chicago 7”
The last decade, from “Munich” onwards, have seen Spielberg tackling politics in a new way in his work, with that film, “Lincoln” and “ Bridge of Spies” marking a sort of trilogy that sees the director use historical events to comment on modern-day situations. They were nearly joined by a fourth, as the helmer came within months of shooting “The Trial Of The Chicago 7” back in 2008. Scripted by Aaron Sorkin, the film would have told the story of the trial of seven defendants, including Abbie Hoffman, who were accused of conspiracy, incitement to riot after the protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Already the subject of Brett Morgen’s partly animated documentary “Chicago 10: Speak Your Peace” by the time Sorkin’s script found its way to Spielberg’s hands, the film was meant to be the director’s follow-up to “Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of Crystal Skull,” with an April 2008 start date mooted. Sacha Baron Cohen was signed to play Hoffman, and Will Smith confirmed he was in talks to play Bobby Seale, while a Vanity Fair piece revealed that actors like Taye Diggs, Adam Arkin, Kevin Spacey and Philip Seymour Hoffman were all linked to the project. But the film reached a stumbling block over fears, after the crippling WGA strike, that the Screen Actors Guild would down too during production: Spielberg pushed the movie, and never picked it up again. Ben Stiller replaced him as director by the end of that year, and Paul Greengrass picked the movie up in 2013, but fell off soon after, and neither got it going. Even so, Spielberg said just a few weeks ago that the movie’s still in consideration, though he’ll likely produce rather than direct.