Ridley scott Today he is 84 years old, an age at which many directors have already retired, some of their own free will and others against their will. However, he remains unstoppable and this 2021 he has released two films, ‘The Last Duel’ and ‘The Gucci House’. In addition, he already has other projects underway such as ‘Gladiator 2’, but throughout his career he has not been able to carry out all the titles that he has wanted to take care of.
Today we are going to take advantage of his birthday to review six films he was about to direct but that finally ended up in the hands of other directors.
Blade Runner 2049
Scott had been interested in expanding the ‘Blade Runner’ universe for many years, but it wasn’t until 2011 that a deal with producer Alcon was announced. Michael Green and Hampton Fancher they were hired to handle the script and the project progressed smoothly. Actually, too calmly, because it seemed that the producer was not quite clear what approach to take.
That led to Scott being little less than forced out of the director’s chair in order to honor his commitment to Fox to handle ‘Alien: Covenant’, but he remained involved as an executive producer on ‘Blade Runner 2049’ and was not involved in any way. credited in the script. Shortly after, Denis Villeneuve He got on board and the film ended up being released the same year as the sequel to ‘Prometheus’.
‘Dune’
The producer Dino De Laurentiis It took him several years to come up with an adaptation of the novel by Frank Herbert since he acquired the rights in 1976. Three years later he hired Ridley Scott to take care of the staging, but the previous work was progressing too slow for his liking, which did not help because his initial plan was to divide everything into two movies.
After working on up to three versions of the script, affected by the death of his brother from cancer, unhappy with the choice of Mexico City to shoot the film there, and tired of the slow and demanding pace of work, Scott decided to abandon ship to focus on another sci-fi movie. We ran out of his ‘Dune’ (that incarnation was eventually directed by David lynch), but in return we received ‘Blade Runner’.
‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (‘Thw Wolf of Wall Street’)
In this case there is a bit of a trick, since the first contacted to direct it was Martin Scorsese, who ended up frustrated because the project seemed to get stuck, so he decided to put it aside to focus on ‘Shutter Island’. It was then that Warner noticed Ridley Scott, and by then it was anticipated that Leonardo Dicaprio starred in it, but the studio lost interest and things didn’t go well.
Luckily, an independent company decided to give the film the green light without any limitation on what could be shown on the screen, being then when Scorsese returned and everything accelerated, releasing ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ just a year later.
‘The truth hurts’ (‘Concussion’)
Scott had decided that his next films after ‘Exodus: Gods and kings’, also being clear that he needed a star to lead the cast. In fact, it was he himself who sent the script to Will Smith saying she had a gift for him. It was difficult for the actor to convince him because of the love he had for American football, but who did not stay behind the cameras was Scott himself.
It surely helped that many studios, including Fox with whom Scott had an agreement at the time, did not want to have anything to do with ‘The truth hurts’, with Sony being the only one who decided to bet on it. It is not clear if by then Jonathan Landesman, also the author of the script, was already the one chosen to replace Scott as director, but I suspect that his own influence must have been a factor.
‘I am Legend’ (‘I Am Legend’)
The acclaimed novel by Richard Matheson It has been brought to the big screen on several occasions, but many surely remember more the version starring Will Smith in 2007. A project that went back 12 years before, which was when Warner began to work seriously on it, hiring Mark Protosevich to write the script.
Scott was soon chosen to direct ‘I am a legend’ and the names of various Hollywood stars were shuffled until it was decided that the lead had to be Arnold schwarzenegger. Everything was closed and Scott had signed John Logan to adapt Protosevich’s script to his personal preferences.
It was then that everything got complicated, reaching a point where a somewhat pissed off Protosevich had to be hired again to steer the course. However, costs skyrocketed, and despite Scott’s efforts to cut them, Warner lost faith in the project and canceled it. After several subsequent attempts –Michael Bay was about to direct it – the thing went ahead with Protosevich credited as one of its two screenwriters.
‘Tristan and Isolde’ (‘Tristan + Isolde’)
The film directed by Kevin reynolds hit theaters in 2006, but the truth is that it was about to be Ridley Scott’s second behind-the-scenes work, as he presented the idea when he had not yet shot ‘The Duelists’. He even decided during a visit to France that he had found an ideal person to play Tristan, but it didn’t take off.
Scott preferred to focus on other projects and finally his second feature film was ‘Alien, the eighth passenger’, but many years later he was presented with the script and he regained interest in it, but not enough to direct it. Of course, he remembered that he had liked what Reynolds did in ‘The revenge of the Count of Monte Cristo’So she decided to contact him to offer it to him and now everything has moved forward.