The movie business is a tricky one, and sometimes even big projects fail.

Here are some would-have-been movies that didn’t happen

Some films stumble into production without a finished screenplay.

Others are nixed long before the thought of even unpacking a camera.

But some big films get agonisingly close to shooting, often with millions of dollars already invested in them.

In fact, it sort of did.

As director Gore Verbinski told us last year, we started building sets.

We just started building them, and pre-vizzing some sequences.

I just couldnt manage a PG-13 version of the film, with the Little Sisters and the injections.

To get an appropriate balance level.

And yet its an art deco world, so theres so much building of sets.

We couldnt go on location.

Basically, we were constructing a space station.

As such, the cost of the movie was high.

The film Verbinski wanted to make would have cost $200m.

Verbinski, and subsequent director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, refused.

The movie was duly scrapped, in spite of extensive pre-production work already being completed.

From there, pieces seemed to be moving into place.

The virus outbreak thriller attracted Robert Redford to star, with Jodie Foster also signed up.

Fox was down nearly $10m when it admitted defeat, not helped by Robert Redford dropping out.

Outbreakwent on to be a solid hit.Crisis In The Hot Zoneremains unmade.

The best film Arnold Schwarzenegger never made?

Well, sets extensive sets had been built in Spain.

Furthermore, the cast was in place.

Alongside Schwarzenegger were to be Robert Duvall, Jennifer Connelly, John Turturro and Christopher McDonald.

But then it suddenly fell apart.

Carolco, funding the picture, was getting more cash strapped by this stage.

Yet in a recent Empire interview, Schwarzenegger recalled just what went wrong.

It was all written and ready to go but then Paul started going crazy.

We had the final meeting with the studio and we were all sitting at this boardroom table.

They said so the budget is $100 million.

Thats a lot of money.

Theres no guarantee that were going to make it til tomorrow!

I cannot have control over God I dont believe in God, why am I talking about God?

Crusadeshut down shortly afterwards, never to be made…

But he never did.

Instead, at a meeting in May 2000, everything changed.

Expensive lawyers argued about this, before a settlement was eventually reached.

In the middle of June, with Myers not budging,Dieterwas shut down for good.

However, come August 2012 and all was not well withThe Shadow King.

Specifically, Disney decided that the film was not coming together in a manner that pleased the studio.

It halted production on the project, giving Selick permission to shop it around to other studios.

A real, real pity.

Once upon a time, Steven Seagal was box office gold.

Well, bronze, but he could pull in a bit of cash.

20th Century Fox was set to back the project, in conjunction with Morgan Creek Productions.

As Empire reported back in February 1993, Steven is so pissed off.

Cannon Films enjoyed a moderate success with its take onMasters Of The Universe, starring Dolph Lundgren.

But two weeks into this ambitious production, things went wrong.

Masters Of The Universe 2was clearly dead.

That film would be become a Jean-Claude Van Damme favourite:Cyborg.

Naturally, they hated each other.

Pixar, already secretive, is now even more careful which projects it formally announces.

We wont bang on about this one, because weve covered what happened many times on the site.

But as the costs ofSuperman Livesescalated, Warner Bros got nervous.

Come crunch time, the studio blinked, and Superman would not live again until Bryan Singer came along…