10 movies that should have never been made

Posted On October 20, 2024October 20, 2024

Saying a movie should have never been made is probably the most damning thing anyone could utter about a motion picture. It goes beyond giving a movie a bad review or complaining that you wish the filmmakers had made something else instead. Honestly, though, sometimes the thought really does lodge itself in the noggin after watching a particularly objectionable film. Leaving the cinema won’t help; its stink is impossible to avoid.

Naturally, there are different reasons why one may believe a film shouldn’t have been made. The most obvious one is that the movie is objectively godawful, with no redeeming features. These are the kind of flicks that waste people’s time, so you’d rather they were removed from existence.

Another reason, though, isn’t necessarily about quality. Sometimes, a movie is a perfectly acceptable diversion from reality, but there is something about its background that makes you wish it never came to be. Maybe a cast or crew member has done some questionable things in their personal life, and the idea of them profiting from the film is hard to take. Maybe the single defining reason for making the movie was cold, hard commerce, and nobody involved cared much about its artistic merit. Maybe the content of the film is potentially offensive, and the creators have taken no unique approach to explore it with sensitivity.

The ten movies chosen for this list run the gamut of these reasons. Some of them are just dreadful movies, some are craven examples of Hollywood’s obsession with IP, and others are just highly problematic no matter what way you look at them.

10 movies that should have never been made:

The Exorcist: Believer

When Universal announced in 2021 that it had acquired the rights to The Exorcist franchise for a cool $400million, many eyebrows were raised. When the studio also revealed that it planned to make a new Exorcist trilogy with David Gordon Green – the man who had just capped off a reimagined Halloween trilogy for Blumhouse — those sceptical eyebrows only got higher.

Firstly, the idea of a director immediately leaping from one horror remake trilogy to another sounded like a recipe for disaster. After all, his Halloween films had progressively worsened with each instalment. On top of that, the idea of advertising a trilogy before the first movie has even had a chance to be a success seemed like hubris.

By the time The Exorcist: Believer hit screens in October 2023 and was resoundingly rejected by the world, though, it became obvious that the idea was a non-starter. In the wake of terrible reviews and middling box office, Universal revealed that plans for the next two films were being scrapped – proving that the whole endeavour should’ve never been attempted. Oh, and then the studio announced Mike Flanagan was going to make another new Exorcist movie, completely separate from Believer. D’oh.

Madame Web

Maybe we’re reading too much into the eye-opening quotes contained within the Bustle profile entitled, “Dakota Johnson can’t fake it.” But when the star of a major superhero blockbuster says, “It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie. I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now,” we reckon it’s cause for alarm.

Of course, the movie in question was the Spider-Man spin-off Madame Web, released by Sony in early 2024. A malformed oddity of a film, it was always fighting an uphill battle thanks to the public’s limited knowledge of the character—even in comic book circles—and a trailer that was memed to high heaven. In the end, the movie wasn’t the worst thing ever put on-screen, but it also was by no means good. In fact, it wasn’t even in the same ballpark as “good.”

Perhaps this one was a lesson to Hollywood that not every minor character from Marvel or DC needed their own movie. So, in that respect, we’ll file it under “should have never been made.”

Jack and Jill

These days, it’s not uncommon to watch a movie from eras past and think, “Oof. That would never get made today.” Usually, it’s because cultural attitudes have changed in the past decade, and that’s how it should be. Sometimes, though, you look the film up online and find out it was a huge success in its time, and that leads to a long, dark night of the soul pondering what is and isn’t okay in cinema.

Sometimes, though, that movie is Jack and Jill, an execrable Adam Sandler flick which was so widely hated when it came out in 2012 that it won the most Razzie awards for a single film in history. In that case, it’s heartening to think that even 12 years ago, society knew that Sandler in drag was unfunny at best and highly problematic at worst.

We’ll leave the final word to Al Pacino, who preposterously chose to appear in the film. In 2024, he told The New York Times, “It came at a time in my life that I needed it because it was after I found out I had no more money. My accountant was in prison, and I needed something quickly.” Poor Al.

Psycho

In 1998, Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant revealed that a weird thing kept happening every time he had a meeting at Universal. He told Entertainment Weekly, “There was always some guy with a list of old B-movies they wanted to remake. So, in reaction to that, I suggested they find a really good movie and not change anything. I thought it would be an interesting pop piece. But they seemed sort of befuddled by the idea.”

Van Sant then pitched the studio on a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcok’s horror classic Psycho. He even wanted to use most of Joseph Stefano’s original script again, and Bernard Herrman’s score would stay virtually the same. The studio agreed to Van Sant’s odd plan, and when EW asked why he insisted on making the same movie again, he shrugged, “Why not? It’s a marketing scheme. Why does a studio ever remake a film? Because they have this little thing they’ve forgotten about that they could put in the marketplace and make money from.”

To be honest, we don’t think we need to add much here to explain why Psycho (1998) is on this list of movies that should never have been made. Its own director has already told us why.

American Psycho 2

This mostly forgotten direct-to-video sequel is a prime example of one of Hollywood’s most frustrating tendencies. American Psycho 2, which starred a young Mila Kunis and had nothing to do with the 2000 Christian Bale black comedy classic, didn’t start out as an American Psycho sequel.

Instead, the project began as an original script called The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die – and that was the film Kunis signed up for. However, in the midst of production, Lions Gate saw an opportunity to make a quick buck by retrofitting the script and connecting it to Mary Harron’s original film. In 2005, when Kunis got wind of a potential third film in the franchise, she told MTV, “Please — somebody stop this. Write a petition. When I did the second one, I didn’t know it would be American Psycho 2. It was supposed to be a different project, and it was re-edited, but, ooh…I don’t know. Bad.”

The Godfather Part III

Following the monumental success of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, the third instalment is a prime example of why, sometimes, it’s better to leave a masterpiece untouched. Released nearly two decades after the second film, The Godfather Part III failed to live up to its predecessors in almost every aspect and was largely created as a grab for cash.

It may have felt as if the story needed a little more closure, but director Francis Ford Coppola should have left the saga alone. The convoluted plot and uninspired performances—most notably from a young Sofia Coppola, who was left scarred by the dalliance on screen—left audiences cold. Gone was the sharp tension and masterful storytelling, replaced with a dull and sometimes nonsensical narrative. It was not the grand finale everybody had hoped it might be. Instead, the third part was a final act that almost everybody would rather forget.

A Serbian Film

Infamous for its gratuitous use of shocking content, A Serbian Film has earned a reputation as one of the most disturbing movies ever made, and that’s saying something. While many of the movies on our list so far have produced an emotion closer to cringing than anything else, this picture is one we’d rather have never seen at all for a whole different set of reasons.

The controversy surrounding the film largely stems from its explicit violence and exploitative themes, which many argue serve no purpose other than to provoke outrage and incense its audience. Intended as an allegory for the brutalisation of Serbian culture, the movie’s chaotic narrative is so buried beneath grotesque scenes that any message it may have hoped to convey is entirely lost under the unwarranted rubble of humanity. Sparking debates upon its release, as audiences discussed the blurred lines between artistry and emotional assault, the movie has largely been confined to galleries rather than cinemas.

Battlefield Earth

Sometimes, a film is so catastrophically bad that it becomes the stuff of legend, and Battlefield Earth fits that bill perfectly. Based on the novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, this sci-fi disaster starring John Travolta is a masterclass in how not to make a movie. When you consider the sheer volume of cash that was pumped into the production to create it, then you are most certainly left wincing.

From its incoherent plot to the laughably bad special effects and John Travolta‘s over-the-top performance as the villainous Terl, everything about this film is baffling to the point of hilarity. The movie likely started out as an idea to match the gargantuan success of Star Wars, instead, what transpired was a movie so hacky that Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson were caught trying to play keepy-uppies with the reel. Cringe-inducing dialogue is enough to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but the strange camera angles and awkward pacing make it so bad that it would have simply been better to remain unmade.

Movie 43

A series of gross sketches mawkishly stitched together with a flimsy narrative and enough awkward giggles to make a high school sex-ed class blush, Movie 43 is perhaps the greatest flop on this list. Largely because the cast is so impressive that it feels like the picture would have to try really hard to mess it all up.

Comedy heroes like Anna Faris, Kristen Bell, and Johnny Knoxville couldn’t save it. Acting heavyweights Richard Gere, Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, Uma Thurman, Noami Watts, and Chris Pratt couldn’t save it. Even Academy Award-winning talent like Emma Stone, Halle Berry, and Kate Winslet failed to make this picture worthwhile. With that much talent in one place, it is truly impressive to have a movie fail so spectacularly.

Pinocchio

Disney’s live-action remakes have been hit and miss, but Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio from 2022 is a glaring misfire that never should have been greenlit. The iconic source material is one thing but this adaptation feels hollower than the body of the wooden puppet, with its lacklustre CGI and uninspired performances.

The usually reliable Tom Hanks is lost as Geppetto and never really delivers what is expected of him, while the wooden character design of Pinocchio himself is unintentionally eerie. The main issue, however, is that the movie never lands on the correct tone. At points, it is saccharine with sentimentality, while at others, the modernisation makes it feel clinical and perhaps more closely aligned with the reason for its original conception: a money grab. Some things should be left as they are, and there is very little reason to resurface this story anytime soon.

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