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I would like to actually read this vault of stories, or at least the summaries. Kinda wish it actually existed.
Definitely happens in one off scenarios. District 9 was originally gonna be a halo movie. The giant robot spider in wild wild west has an amusing story behind it of one of the director types being desperate for a giant spider in his next movie (it was originally gonna be a super hero movie I think). Kevin James tells the story on a panel at a con.
The giant mechanical spider in Wild Wild West was a calling card of producer Jon Peters, and was called to appear in not one, but two comic book adaptations that fell through. The first was the mythical "Superman Lives" which was set to star Nicholas Cage as Superman and Christopher Walken as Brainiac, culminating in Superman fighting a giant spider. That was in the early 90s. Then in the early 2000s, he attempted to produce a legendarily bad adaptation of The Sandman, that collapsed when Neil Gaiman leaked the proposed script online and it was ridiculed into oblivion.
That we didn't get that is an absolute crime, I say.
No lie, I'd watch Christopher Walken as Brainiac, but Cage as Superman? I can't believe that man ever saw so much as a lawn, let alone that he was raised as a farmer's son in Nowheresville. He's pure Big City. Now, as a gender-swapped Lois Lane, that I could believe.
Cage was well cast in The Family Man for just that reason, IMO.
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