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You’ll Never Watch These 20 Movies (Because You Literally Can’t)

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Ignacio Weil

TV Shows & Movies - October 30th 2026, 17:00 GMT+1

1. "Empires of the Deep" – Directed by Michael French

A mermaid blockbuster starring Olga Kurylenko sounds like something a streaming service would recommend with suspicious enthusiasm. *Empires of the Deep* aimed considerably higher: a lavish underwater fantasy backed by Chinese businessman Jon Jiang and a reported $130 million budget. Changing directors, production difficulties, and troubled effects work helped turn that ambition into an expensive disappearing act. Trailers surfaced, but the promised feature never followed them out of the water. | © E-magine Studios

Cropped Batgirl — 2. "Batgirl" – Directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah

Leslie Grace had filmed her superhero debut, Brendan Fraser had played Firefly, and Michael Keaton had put the batsuit back on. Then Warner Bros. Discovery canceled *Batgirl* during post-production, leaving a roughly $90 million production without a release. The decision reflected the company’s changing strategy for DC and streaming films. Whatever its eventual quality might have been, audiences lost the chance to judge a movie that had already made it through the cameras. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Cropped Sassone — 3. "The Fantastic Four" – Directed by Oley Sassone

Doctor Doom wasn’t the biggest threat facing this particular superhero team; the business arrangements were. Roger Corman and Constantin Film’s inexpensive *The Fantastic Four* went into production as the adaptation rights approached expiration, with a cast expecting an actual release. Instead, the movie was shelved, becoming a notorious footnote in Marvel history. Bootlegs have circulated for decades, however, so its official burial was considerably more successful than its disappearance. | © Constantin Film

Cropped Bergman — 4. "Cries and Whispers" (Extended Cut) – Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s red-walled portrait of suffering is available to watch; the supposed extended edition is another story. Official records document the familiar feature, but provide no substantiation for a separate, longer version awaiting discovery. That distinction matters when a filmmaker’s reputation encourages speculation about hidden masterpieces. *Cries and Whispers* already makes an emotionally punishing evening out of its running time, without requiring an imaginary director’s cut to deepen the experience. | © Cinematograph AB

Cropped Nolan — 5. "Larceny" – Directed by Christopher Nolan

Completing Christopher Nolan’s filmography hits an unexpectedly small obstacle: an eight-minute short. Shot in black-and-white using equipment from UCL’s film society, *Larceny* screened at the Cambridge Film Festival before slipping out of public circulation. Its modest scale makes the absence especially tantalizing; this is Nolan working before blockbuster budgets and elaborate release campaigns. Unlike his readily available *Doodlebug*, the early burglary film remains a frustrating blank spot for anyone determined to see everything. | © UCL Film Society

Cropped Clouzot — 6. "L’Enfer" – Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

Romy Schneider’s face, transformed by strange colors and restless lighting, remains the mesmerizing advertisement for a film Henri-Georges Clouzot never finished. *L’Enfer* was meant to turn a husband’s jealousy into an audiovisual assault, with experimental imagery expressing his unraveling mind. Production troubles escalated until Clouzot suffered a heart attack and filming stopped. The surviving footage appears in a later documentary, allowing glimpses of the experiment without pretending its intended dramatic structure was ever completed. | © Columbia Pictures

Cropped Orson Welles — 7. "The Deep" & "Don Quixote" – Directed by Orson Welles

Orson Welles left behind two particularly tantalizing unfinished journeys: a maritime thriller adapted from *Dead Calm* and a wandering, modern-world encounter with Cervantes’s knight. *The Deep* survives in workprint form, while *Don Quixote* generated scattered footage and a later assembly by Jesús Franco. Neither offers a finished version approved by Welles. Their surviving material reveals substantial creative work, making the missing endings to their production stories more frustrating than any ordinary canceled project. | © Orson Welles

Cropped Flagpole Special — 8. "Flagpole Special" – Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson once made a seventeen-minute film that largely denied viewers the basic courtesy of showing its actors’ faces. *Flagpole Special* frames John C. Reilly and Chris Penn around their torsos during a rambling conversation, using a single fixed shot. Commissioned for a Creative Time event, it belongs to Anderson’s experimental margins rather than his theatrical filmography. Its elusive status makes a deliberately unglamorous little production an unusually desirable prize for his completists. | © Paul Thomas Anderson

Cropped Murnau — 9. "4 Devils" – Directed by F.W. Murnau

Four circus acrobats, tangled loyalties, and a dangerous romantic temptation gave F. W. Murnau material well suited to his expressive visual storytelling. Unfortunately, *4 Devils* now has to be imagined through photographs, scripts, and production artwork. Both its original synchronized-score version and its later part-talking incarnation are considered lost. Following *Sunrise* with another Janet Gaynor collaboration should have ensured lasting interest; it did, but interest alone cannot conjure a surviving print. | © Fox Film Corporation

Cropped Rodriguez — 10. "100 Years" – Directed by Robert Rodriguez

Keep November 18 free. The catch is which century. Robert Rodriguez’s *100 Years*, written by and starring John Malkovich, was commissioned to promote Louis XIII cognac and sealed away for a premiere a century after its announcement. Its specially designed safe turns delayed gratification into an entire distribution strategy. Invitations were intended to pass down through families, leaving today’s curious viewers with promotional material and a release date better suited to their descendants. | © Rémy Martin

Cropped Lanton Mills — 11. "Lanton Mills" – Directed by Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick playing a cowboy opposite Harry Dean Stanton is already a persuasive sales pitch. Add a bank robbery and a collision between Western characters and the modern world, and *Lanton Mills* becomes an especially curious early credit. Malick made the short at the American Film Institute, with Caleb Deschanel behind the camera. It survives through the AFI, but restricted research access has kept this mischievous student project far from an ordinary home-viewing release. | © American Film Institute

Cropped Lanthimos — 12. "Uranisco Disco," "The R*pe of Chloe," and "Bleat" – Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Yorgos Lanthimos’s shorts present three different access problems. *The Rape of Chloe* and *Uranisco Disco* are elusive early works, the latter built around an attempted pornographic musical—hardly evidence of a conventional apprenticeship. *Bleat*, starring Emma Stone and Damien Bonnard, has instead enjoyed public screenings with live musical accompaniment. Its story of death, desire, and resurrection was designed as a theatrical event, making a streaming search a poor substitute for being in the right auditorium. | © Ideefixe Productions / Greek National Opera / NEON

Cropped conversations with vincent — 13. "Conversations With Vincent" – Directed by Tim Burton

Vincent Price’s influence runs through Tim Burton’s imagination, which makes their unreleased documentary collaboration feel like a particularly personal omission. Burton filmed black-and-white interviews with his idol, seeking something more intimate than another screen appearance beneath elaborate makeup. The project never reached a public release, despite later discussion of completing it as *A Visit with Vincent*. What remains inaccessible is the chance to hear a formative influence examined by the filmmaker who admired him. | © Tim Burton Productions

Cropped A Woman of the Sea — 14. "A Woman of the Sea" – Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Charlie Chaplin produced this silent drama for Edna Purviance, entrusting directing duties to Josef von Sternberg rather than appearing himself. That combination alone makes *A Woman of the Sea* a painful absence from film history. The completed production never received a general release, and Chaplin subsequently ordered its negative destroyed. Surviving photographs preserve glimpses of Purviance and the coastal setting, but no known print allows this unusual meeting of major filmmaking talents to speak for itself. | © Chaplin Film Company

Cropped Jodorowsky — 15. "Dune" – Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Pink Floyd, and H. R. Giger all belonged to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s astonishing plans for *Dune*. The proposed adaptation assembled artists, designs, and elaborate storyboards, but failed to secure the financing needed to begin filming. Consequently, no secret finished epic awaits discovery in a collector’s basement. Its production bible and the documentary about its collapse preserve the ambition, leaving the actual performances and spectacle permanently dependent on somebody else’s imagination. | © Camera One

Cropped Louis C K — 16. "I Love You, Daddy" – Directed by Louis C.K.

A Toronto premiere and a distribution deal had *I Love You, Daddy* positioned for a normal theatrical run. That ended after sexual misconduct allegations against Louis C.K., which he acknowledged, prompted The Orchard to cancel its release. The black-and-white comedy follows a father confronting his teenage daughter’s involvement with an older filmmaker. An awards screener subsequently leaked, so the film’s absence concerns legitimate commercial distribution rather than a complete lack of viewable copies. | © Pig Newton, Inc.

Cropped Jerry Lewis — 17. "The Day the Clown Cried" – Directed by Jerry Lewis

Jerry Lewis’s Holocaust drama acquired a reputation almost entirely without an audience. His portrayal of a clown imprisoned by the Nazis became entangled in financing problems, rights disputes, and his own later embarrassment. Surviving material complicates the mythology: the Library of Congress holds fragments, while a more complete workprint surfaced privately in Sweden. Neither development delivered a conventional release, leaving *The Day the Clown Cried* suspended between historical curiosity and a film people can actually assess. | © Jerry Lewis Productions

Cropped Big Bug Man — 18. "Big Bug Man" – Directed by Bob Bendetson

Marlon Brando reportedly wore a wig, dress, and makeup to record an elderly woman’s voice for *Big Bug Man*. Nobody needed to see him, but apparently Brando did not consider that sufficient reason to skip the costume. Brendan Fraser voiced the candy-factory employee who gains insect-related powers in this stalled animated comedy. Brando’s final recorded film performance remains its greatest curiosity, although the existence of his dialogue does not establish that a finished feature was ever completed. | © Studio-Free Studios

Cropped Hoffman — 19. "Gore" – Directed by Michael Hoffman

Netflix’s Gore Vidal biopic made it through filming in Italy before allegations against Kevin Spacey brought its release plans to a halt. Michael Hoffman directed Spacey as the author, with Michael Stuhlbarg playing Vidal’s longtime partner, Howard Austen. *Gore* consequently became an expensive unseen credit for its entire cast and crew. Spacey has since publicly advocated for its release, but an actor wanting his performance seen does not decide what happens to a studio-owned film. | © Netflix

Cropped Robb — 20. "Don's Plum" – Directed by R.D. Robb

The forbidden-film reputation of *Don’s Plum* needs a geographical qualifier. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire disputed the transformation of the project into a feature, and a settlement restricted distribution in the United States and Canada. Elsewhere, the improvised black-and-white diner drama screened and received releases. Its young cast and legal history make it an intriguing Hollywood artifact, but describing it as impossible to watch gives its suppression considerably more credit than the facts support. | © Polo Pictures Entertainment

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Tracking down a movie usually takes a quick search and, annoyingly, another subscription. These 20 films require considerably more luck. From lost movies with no known surviving copies to unreleased productions kept out of public view, they expose the gaps in our supposedly watch-anything age. You can read about them, hunt for scraps of footage, and wonder what you’re missing—but settling in to watch the actual film is another matter.

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Tracking down a movie usually takes a quick search and, annoyingly, another subscription. These 20 films require considerably more luck. From lost movies with no known surviving copies to unreleased productions kept out of public view, they expose the gaps in our supposedly watch-anything age. You can read about them, hunt for scraps of footage, and wonder what you’re missing—but settling in to watch the actual film is another matter.