Development hell
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Development hell is media-industry jargon for a movie, television screenplay or computer game (or sometimes just a concept or idea) getting stuck in development and never going into production.
In the case of a movie or television screenplay, the screenwriter may have successfully sold a screenplay to a certain set of producers or studio executives, but then the executives in charge change, and these new people raise objections to all the scripts and casting decisions they oversee, mandating rewrites and recasting. As a director and actors become "attached" to the project, further rewrites and recasting may be done in order to accommodate the needs of the new talents involved in the project. Should the project fail to meet their needs, they might leave the project or simply refuse to complete it, causing further rewrites and recasting. Worse still is when a finished project (for example, a television pilot) is sent back for rewrites and recasting, which can often force a project to begin again from scratch. This process can last for months or years, and a project trapped in this state will more often than not be abandoned by all interested parties or cancelled outright. This process is not naturally an element of filmmaking. Many times, this "Hell" occurs simply due to the lack of foresight and competing visions of those parties involved. This revolving door in the film industry happens most commonly with projects that, to some, may have multiple interpretations and affect several points of view[citation needed].
Films
Sergio Leone intended to reunite with his Once Upon a Time in America star Robert De Niro for this $70 million epic about the Siege of Leningrad, but died before he could film it.
Based on Alien vs. Predator, Peter Briggs wrote a script for this movie in 1990. Paul W. S. Anderson was eventually hired to write and direct the movie, which was released in 2004, and though it debuted #1 at the box office, the film was panned by critics and fans alike.
For years the classic example of a film in development hell, the third film in the popular Alien series had a tumultuous production history. After the success of the 1986 film Aliens, 20th Century Fox immediately commissioned a sequel. No less than eight writers contributed scripts focusing on different characters in the series, as actress Sigourney Weaver expressed hesitation to return for a third film. When Weaver finally agreed to return, acclaimed director Vincent Ward joined the production to write and direct. However, shortly before filming began, the producers fired Ward over story disputes and replaced him with first-time director David Fincher. With a start date pending, screenwriters Walter Hill and David Giler struggled to re-write the script to utilize the partially constructed sets and costumes, as well as David Fincher's vision of a dark, nihilistic story. Ultimately, filming began without a finished script, resulting in major re-shoots to accommodate story changes. The budget spiraled from forty-five to sixty-five million dollars, and Fincher quit and disowned the film during post-production. The result was a film which was both commercially and critically unsuccessful.
The script was originally written in the late 60s. George Lucas was originally slated to direct, but schedule conflicts didn't allow. Under Francis Ford Coppola the script underwent several rewrites. The film was released in 1979.
The film had been in "development hell" for the better part of a decade. In 2000, the sequel was announced to be a March 2002 release. However, casting for the male lead was long and troublesome, with many male actors declining the role. Eventually, no acceptable male lead was cast before production was slated to start in 2001 and the project was cancelled. The star of the original movie, Sharon Stone immediately sued the producers for breach of contract.
In 2004, just before the case was brought to trial, both sides settled for undisclosed terms. One condition of the settlement that was made public was that the movie would be made as originally planned. In April 2005, with the casting of David Morrissey as the male lead, the production began. The film was released in March 2006, and was not successful at the box office.
Batman Triumphant
A fifth film in the Batman franchise. After the box-office failure and critical bombardment of Batman and Robin, Warner Bros. Studios was unsure how to proceed with a fifth film. For a time, despite the failure of the previous film, director Joel Schumacher remained attached to the project, with Batman slated to battle The Scarecrow. Later, a film based on the Batman: Year One storyline, directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by comic book scribe Frank Miller was announced, but later abandoned over script troubles, and concern that the film would not remain true to the source material. A "reboot" film was finally released in 2005 titled Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale, outside the continuity of the original film series.
Blake's 7: A Legacy Reborn
Set to take place 25 years after the end of the original series, this was planned to be a miniseries. Paul Darrow, who played Avon on the original was to be an executive producer and reportedly would have reprised his role briefly in order to pass the torch to the next generation of The Seven. Darrow, due to artistic differences with the production team, left the project in 2002. Since then, there has been no news concerning this revival.
The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day
When director Troy Duffy's film The Boondock Saints, which never saw a theatrical release, became a surprise cult hit on DVD, interest in a sequel was immediately expressed. Duffy has, for some time, had a script written and a cast assembled, production was delayed because the rights to produce the film were wrapped up in litigation, and until it was resolved, the sequel could not enter production. Duffy recently announced the title of the boondocks sequeal would be titled "All Saints Day" and would begin production in 2006.
The next film in the James Bond series appeared to be in a state of development hell as EON Productions, the production company behind all previous 20 official films, had for over a year gone without casting an actor to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. Daniel Craig was chosen for the role in October 2005. Filming began in January 2006, having previously been delayed for a year. One contributing factor is the buyout of MGM by Sony.
Originally slated to go into production in the early 1980s, and to star Frank Sinatra, Goldie Hawn and Liza Minnelli, the film never got past the development stage due to the death of director Bob Fosse. After a successful stage revival, Miramax attempted to produce a film version starring Madonna and Goldie Hawn. Filming was repeatedly delayed over troubles involving developing a suitable script, hiring a director and casting issues, with actresses like Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz, Gwenyth Paltrow, Rosie O'Donnell signing on to the project, only to drop out shortly thereafter. The project remained in development hell, with various names attached to the project until screenwriter Bill Condon and director Rob Marshall constructed a feasible story concept and found stars willing to remain committed to the project. Eventually, the film would be released in 2002, and would also garner six Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 2002.
A bidding war between producers Lynda Obst of Fox and Arnold Kopelson of Warner Bros. over Richard Preston's non-fiction article published in The New Yorker magazine led to two rival productions. While Kopelson steamed ahead with his own virus movie Outbreak, Obst's film - to be directed by Ridley Scott - became bogged-down in endless rewrites to satisfy its two leads, Jodie Foster and Robert Redford. Even after Outbreak was released, Obst insisted she would still make the film. Preston turned his article into the book The Hot Zone.
Roger Waters' opera Ça Ira labored in a self-imposed development hell from its conception in 1987 until its release in 2005.
A number of directors have attempted to adapt Cervantes' famed work to the screen, often with results so disastrous, some consider the property to be cursed. Most notably, Orson Welles and Terry Gilliam have experienced disaster with their attempted productions. Welles spent as many as twenty years trying to film a version of the novel, routinely beginning filming only to lose funding and shut down production later. Though many of his lead actors died during production, Welles continued to work on the film until his death in 1985. An incomplete version was released in 1992. Terry Gilliam long dreamed of a project entitled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, starring Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort. After beginning production in 2000, Gilliam and his crew were plagued by disaster, including flash floods, hail and noise from fighter jets. Furthermore, star Rochefort developed a double herniated disc and had to quit the film. The film was cancelled, though Gilliam has attempted to restart production numerous times since. A documentary of the attempted making of this movie called Lost in La Mancha was released. Disney also tried making a 2-D animated version of the story, but the project died due to the direction it was heading. Employees thought the film was too dark and the film was never made.
The movie of the video game was in development hell ever since it was first proposed at about the time of the original Doom game, circa 1994. In 1994, Universal Pictures acquired rights to make a Doom movie, however they sat on the project and the rights expired. Columbia Pictures then acquired the rights but also sat on the project until the rights expired. About 8 years later, in 2002, Warner Bros. announced that they acquired rights to the Doom movie which lingered in development hell for the past 8 years with certain contractual agreements made with id Software, one being that if Warners did not get the movie into production within a couple of months, rights would revert back to id Software. Warner Bros. got the movie into pre-production, but something occurred during pre-production that stalled it, and rights reverted back to id Software. In 2003, Universal Pictures reacquired rights to the Doom movie and got it into production in 2004. The movie was released on October 21, 2005, but received mostly poor reviews, and flopped at the box office.
A live-action movie based on the smash hit anime. The movie was announced in 2002; however, it has been in development hell ever since.
This film moved from potential director to potential director (amongst them Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott) throughout the 1970s until David Lynch was placed in control of it. The film was eventually released in 1984.[1]
Based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, a film had been announced as soon as the stage version proved a hit. Ken Russell originally planned to direct with Liza Minnelli in the lead, but disagreements with Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice ultimately stalled the project. Various stars, including Barbra Streisand, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meryl Streep, Bette Midler, as well as stage stars Patti LuPone and Elaine Paige were announced over the years, but the film would not be released until 1996, directed by Alan Parker and starring Madonna.
A long rumored third installment in John Carpenter's movie series. It was announced in early 1999, but has been stuck in development hell for years.
Announced as early as 1987 as a cross-over of the popular slasher films A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, the film was finally released in 2003 to a very mixed reception.
Terry Gilliam expressed interest in directing an adaptation of this novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, but it has been stuck in development hell for several years.
The movie version of the Douglas Adams radio series, book and TV series was in development hell for over 20 years since it was first suggested in 1982, and was slated to have Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray in roles. The two went on to do Ghostbusters and quickly abandoned this project. For several years starting in the 1990s, the biographical blurb in Adams' books actually included the text "A major motion picture is currently in development hell and should be released any decade now". Adams had described trying to get the film made as "trying to cook a steak by having a succession of people walk into a room and breathe on it." It finally escaped development hell in 2003 and was released worldwide in April 2005, slightly under four years after Adams' death.
A Ridley Scott adaptation was scheduled for production in the late 1990s, but fell through due to an inflating budget (upwards of $100 Million, considered tame by today's soaring pricetags). The film was to star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A new adaptation of the film has been announced and is slated for release in 2007, starring Will Smith.
For many years the 2000 AD comic strip had been touted as prime film material but various attempts to get the project off the ground floundered. Eventually a film was made, and released in 1995, starring Sylvester Stallone, but was critically unsuccessful.
A dream project of director Martin Scorsese, the film version labored in development for over ten years. Scorsese assembled a cast and crew no less than three times with stars like Robert DeNiro, Aidan Quinn, Sting and Barbara Hershey, only to have production cancelled or funding withdrawn at the last minute, usually under pressure from conservative Christian groups. The film was finally produced in 1987 starring Willem Dafoe amid protests by conservative Christians over its portrayal of Jesus Christ as conflicted about his divinity. Scorsese, however, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
Since the famous series of novels grew into cult popularity in the 1970s, various directors including John Boorman, and Ridley Scott, had attempted to film a live-action version of the novels. Even The Beatles considered optioning the books with the intention to star. However, each ran into the problem of condensing the story into a manageable running time and eventually abandoned the project, considering it to be technically unfilmable, a sentiment echoed by famed director Stanley Kubrick, who said the technology didn't exist yet to bring the film to fruition as it should be. The animator Ralph Bakshi told part of the story in an animated version released in 1978. The film, which cost $8 million to produce, was a financial success. However, its original distributor considered the film to be a flop, and refused to fund a sequel. With the advent of computer generated imagery, a trilogy of critically and commercially successful films directed by Peter Jackson were released starting in 2001. The final film in the trilogy, Return of the King 2003, went on to win 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture.
Ironically, royalty disputes have stalled a planned film of the prelude novel The Hobbit, which would reunite the cast and creative team from the Lord of the Rings film series.
This film was scheduled to go into production a few years earlier, but the project was delayed due to travel restrictions imposed after the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001. Many cast and crew members could not get to the proposed location. The production office for the project has since closed.
A live-action movie version of Metroid was reportedly in development by Lion Rock Productions, based around Samus Aran, along with her early battles with the Metroids and the Mother Brain. It was scheduled to be released in theaters around 2006[2], but no word has been heard on the title since.
A second attempt was supposedly being made by hollywood director John Woo, though no recent news has been heard on that either.
A screenplay of the William Gibson novel was optioned soon after the novel was first published in 1984, and has been in development hell ever since. Because the rights to the story and characters are owned by the studio that owns the screenplay, the character Molly Millions had to be replaced with a generic girl named "Jane" in the movie version of Gibson's related short story Johnny Mnemonic.
Derek Jarman's science fiction take on the Gospel According to Luke was due to star David Bowie, but Bowie refused to allow his name to be mentioned when raising finance, so the project died. [citation needed]
A feature film version of another Neil Gaiman project, the BBC miniseries and HarperCollins novel Neverwhere, was originally bid for by Jim Henson Studios after the TV series was complete.
Another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical to languish in years of development, production on the film began in the early 1990s, with original stage stars Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. However, when Brightman and Lloyd Webber divorced, the project stalled. Various directors including Shekhar Kapur and stars such as John Travolta and Antonio Banderas came and went, before the film was finally produced in 2004 directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler.
The film version of the hit BBC sitcom has been in development since the mid 1990s, but after numerous delays, there is still no news on production starting.
Jonathan Larson's rock opera, based on Puccini's La Boheme, has long been thought unfilmable. Until 2001, the film rights were held by Miramax Films with Spike Lee set to direct. Lee, however, wished to completely restructure the story to deviate from the La Boheme-inspired story, omit most of the songs, and cast pop stars such as Justin Timberlake in the leads. After Lee left the project, other directors, including Baz Luhrmann and Rob Marshall turned it down, before Miramax sold the rights to Revolution Studios, where the project was finally produced in 2005, directed by Chris Columbus and starring most of the original Broadway cast.
Based on the Palladium Books role-playing game of the same title, said to be optioned by producer Jerry Bruckheimer. According to Palladium CEO/head writer/editor Kevin Siembieda, the movie will not get a green light "until Jerry Bruckheimer gets a script that he loves." With Bruckheimer's production company primarily occupied with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, production on Rifts can be expected to start no earlier than late 2007.
The third installment in the Jackie Chan action series has been delayed due to wrangles between Chan and co-star Chris Tucker. Tucker, however, recently accepted $28 million to reprise his role of Detective James Carter for the film, making him one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood.
Announced as a film as early as 1986, the film labored in development for years, even with respected and powerful directors expressing interest in the project. Most notably, James Cameron long considered the film a dream project to script and direct, and intended to cast Michael Biehn, and later, Leonardo DiCaprio as Spider-Man and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dr. Octopus. A long-running lawsuit prevented any film production for a number of years, as well as concern over the quality of special effects. The film was finally released in 2002, directed by Sam Raimi and was extremely successful at the box office. A sequel followed two years later, and Spider-Man 3 will premiere in the summer of 2007.
A live action Star Blazers film based on the cult animated series AKA Space Battleship Yamato was announced in the mid 1990 by The Walt Disney Company who bought the rights and commissioned a script. The script was said to have leaked over the internet but several facts concerning their plans were made publicly known by the producers of the tentative project, such as the decision to change the name of the titular starship from Yamato/Argo to Arizona and the decision not to use the classic character names. Because of these and several other elements announced, fans enthusiasm for the project cooled, realizing that the movie, if it had been made, would not have been a faithful adaptation of the original work. Disney's movie rights to Star Blazers have long since expired; however, in early 2006, it was announced that Josh C. Kline, who currently owns movie rights, is teaming with Benderspink, the production company behind such films as American Pie, The Ring, and A History of Violence, to revive the project. To date, no writer, director, or actors have been announced for the film.
A remake/additional film of Superman, titled Superman Lives, was initially proposed by producer Jon Peters; it was to be directed by Tim Burton and would star Nicolas Cage. This project was ultimately canceled, though there are several known versions of the script that took on possible storylines, such as Superman's death at the hands of Doomsday and his resurrection, departing from the established mythology at varying degrees. Director Kevin Smith is said to have written a script for this picture and in interviews has discussed several alleged elements of his involvement with the project including the producer's insistence that Superman could not fly. Wolfgang Petersen was attached to develop a joint Superman/Batman film, Batman vs. Superman, but this also fell through. A second script by J.J. Abrams had various directors attached with Brett Ratner, and McG actually commissioning set designs. In 2004, it was announced that production would start on a new script with Bryan Singer as director; this version was released in 2006. It has been said by producers and director Bryan Singer that a 2009 sequel is going ahead.
A potential film of Watchmen, the epic graphic novel by Alan Moore, has been in development since the late 1980s with the recent rise of comic book films reinvigorating the possibility, but problems have arised with each attempt forcing production to cease before any of the attempts even reach the casting stage. The first attempt was under Twentieth Century Fox which had a screenplay written by Sam Hamm however the film was dropped before even having a director assigned. Terry Gilliam was later the first director assigned to the film, under the production group Warner Brothers Pictures with producer Joel Silver who had acquired the rights from Fox, but after several years of attempting to get the story down into a two hour film Gilliam gave up stating that it was impossible. After several years the rights were acquired by Lawrence Gordon who attempted to have the film made at Universal Studios. Gordon contracted David Hayter to write a screenplay, which he completed, as well as to have this be Hayter's debut. Differences between Universal and Gordon caused the film to leave Universal and end up at Revolution Studios, however the production fell apart. Gordon next took the film to Paramount Pictures and in 2004 Darren Aronofsky was announced to direct a new Watchmen adaptation with the screenplay written by David Hayter, however Aronofsky soon left the project to instead film The Fountain, another film that had been in development hell for some time. Paul Greengrass replaced Aronofsky as director but the entire project was soon cancelled due to changes in Paramount leadership. In June of 2006 Warner Brothers Pictures, the first studio to hold the rights which had since re-obtained the film rights from Paramount, announced that Zack Snyder is to be the director of their second attempt at Watchmen with a new script being written.
A sequel to the 1998 film and long-running television series has been in development since the original film proved a success. Various release dates have been announced, but production has yet to begin. At one point, the film was to be directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Plans for a film adaptation were rumored as early as the 1970s, but the film would not see a release until 2000, mainly due to script problems. No less than six writers contributed to the final shooting script. A sequel appeared in theaters in 2003 and the final film premiered Memorial Day Weekend 2006.
Video games
The rumored third entry of the Chrono series (after Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross), "Chrono Break" was registered by Square Enix in 2001, but never oficially announced for development. In 2003, the register was abandoned[3], though the Japanese "Chrono Brake" is still up[4].
A videogame based on the smash-hit anime and manga. It was announced at E3 2005, with a planned release in Q1 2006. There was no info after that and it was removed from Bandai's website later. Many people think it was cancelled and some fans think it might be released on seventh generation era gaming systems.
A videogame based on the Carmageddon series, it was announced in 2003 for the PS2,Xbox and PC but nothing has known after that. As for 2006 2K Games has not made an official cancellation announcement .
In 1995, one year after the October release of Doom 2, there had already been rumors floating around about Doom 3, but id Software indicated that there were currently no plans for a third game in the series. During this time, id had begun work on Quake - a game that could have easily been mistaken for Doom 3 during early production. In 1997, the company quietly started work on the third installment. Four years passed, which saw the release of Quake II, Quake III, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The success of the latter (a remake of Wolfenstein 3D) made id interested in remaking Doom. After some internal arguing about the remake, the game started development in 2001. In the same year, Doom 3 was first shown to the public at Macworld Conference & Expo in Tokyo.
Doom 3 re-emerged in the public spotlight when a gameplay demo was shown at E3 2002, much to the awe of excited fans. Some speculated that id software was targeting the 2002 holiday season, although others believed a 2003 release date would be more realistic. After E3, there was no further press release from id Software regarding the project; the company's website only had RTC Wolfenstein as the latest game. Late in that year, a couple employees at ATI Technologies had leaked a development version of Doom 3 onto the Internet.
Next year, a new trailer was shown at E3 2003 and soon afterwards the id software homepage was updated to showcase Doom 3 as an upcoming project but it was also announced that Doom 3 would not be ready for the 2003 holiday season. Doom 3 was finally released in August 2004, being mostly critically acclaimed and financially successful but also considered a dissapointment, perhaps due to the pre-release hype. Doom 3's impact was lessened by the release of Half-Life 2 a few months later, which received a greater amount of overwhelmingly positive reviews.
A sequel to 3DRealms big-selling first-person shooter Duke Nukem 3D on the PC (released Jan 1996), the game was announced in April 1997 and is currently still in development. The long and tortured development period has been put down to lack of manpower early in the project, game engine changes, content remakes and team members leaving during the development. As of 2006, 3DRealms have said they are firmly on track to getting the game into production, but have yet to give out any firm release dates or new media since 2001 [5]. Whenever questioned on a release date their stock reply is always "When it's done".
Dark Cloud 3 is the upcoming third installment of the real-time role-playing series Dark Cloud. It was announced at E3 2004 and development has supposedly been ongoing ever since. It is set to released for the PlayStation 2 by Level-5 like its predecessors. According to GameStats.com and various rumors, it has been circulating that the game is to be released on December 31, 2006, but nothing has been said as of yet by Level-5 since early 2004 and 2005. However, with a supposed late 2006 release for Japan and the United States, it could be assumed that the United Kingdom and European releases will follow sometime during 2007. Since Dark Cloud 2 was titled Dark Chronicle outside North America, nobody knows what the title for Dark Cloud 3 will be outside North America.
Elite 4 is a video game proposed by Frontier Developments, specifically by David Braben. It can also be written as Elite IV.
It will be a sequel to 1984's Elite, that Braben and his former associate, Ian Bell, wrote primarily for the BBC Micro. Two other sequels, Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters, were released in the 1990s, during which time Braben and Bell had an acrimonious falling out.
Features promised for Elite 4 include Newtonian gravity, realistic star systems and the ability to land on planets.
Elite 4 is considered by many to be Vaporware, meaning it looks unlikely that it will ever appear. It was first proposed back in 1998, and while many games these days can take several years to complete (for example, Frontier took five-and-a-half-years) there have been no formal previews, screenshots, press releases or progress reports released for Elite 4. A pair of character screenshots, technical background on a real-time animation system, and a brief discussion of its implications for character nuance, were included in an Edge magazine feature on animation circa 2000. Since then, the only details about the game provided by the developers are found in a brief FAQ on Frontier Development's site which does not appear to have been updated since 2001.
In September 2005, play.com had a pre-order form for Elite 4, listed as scheduled for release in September 2006. [6] However, Frontier Developments informed a fansite that play.com's release date was merely speculation on their behalf and that no release date had been formally given. [7] Elite fans have, at least, taken some joy that this incident and Frontier Development's response implies the game is still in serious production.
A sequel to Valve's big-selling first-person shooter Half Life on the PC in early 1998, the game was announced in April 1999 and was planned to be released during the holidays. However, much of the staff members at Valve wanted to make other games. The game was released in 2004 with very positive reactions. Currently, the next installment of the Half Life 2 Episodes is in production, a sequel to Half Life 2: Episode One.
Mega Man Anniversary Collection (GBA Version)
Supposed to be a collection of the 5 Game Boy Mega Man titles, this version was fraught with delays. Capcom issued refunds to people who had pre-ordered the game. Whether it is cancelled or in development hell is unknown. According to GameSpot, its release date has been set as October 1, 2006. [8]
Nigthmare Creatures 3 was initially announced for a Spring 2003 release for Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox, but the game soon fell into development hell. It began development at Kalisto in 2002 and Ubisoft obtained the publishing rights, but Kalisto soon went out of business and Ubisoft assumed development duties. Kalisto's apparent concept of the game involved a heroine exploring 19th century Prague during the daytime and merging with a raven at nightfall to transform into a beast and battle Adam Crowley's monsters, but Ubisoft reportedly began designing the game from the ground up when it gained control over the game's development and it's unknown whether Kalisto's original concept remained intact. Spring 2003 came and went with no news on the title. In 2004, Ubisoft representatives claimed the game had not been cancelled, but the company has remained quiet about Nightmare Creatures 3 ever since. As of 2006, an official cancellation announcement has yet to be made, and it's possible that development of the game has been carried over to one or more of the seventh generation era gaming systems.
Prey has seen several attempts of complete rewrites starting in 1995, right after 3D Realms finished Rise of the Triad. The main developers always left for different reasons, with the self-made engines turning out to be troublesome [9]. The last incarnation by Human Head Studios with the licensed Doom 3 engine has been successive, releasing the game in 2006, eleven years later with positive reviews.
In 2000, one year after Quake 3's release there have been rumors for a Quake 4 but id Software said nothing about it. Then in 2002, id quietly started work on the 4th installment of the Quake series with Raven Software. It was planned to be released in 2003 however it turned to not go. Then after a trailer was showed at E3 2004, the release was set to that year. But Quake 4 was finally released in Winter 2005 for the Xbox 360 and PC, with mixed sales and reviews.
Officially announced in 2001, Resident Evil 4 underwent a long development period in which three proposed versions of the game were discarded by the developers (one even became a separate game, Devil May Cry) before the finished product was released in 2005.
The game was finally released in 2005 for the GameCube and PS2 with very positive reactions. A PC version is scheduled for release in December 2006.
Sonic X-treme was a planned installment in the Sonic The Hedgehog series, but never made it to market. Sonic X-treme was planned to be the first Sonic release for the Sega Saturn, and the first 3D Sonic title. Sega gave it a release date of Christmas 1996, but disputes between Sega's American and Japanese divisions, and the declining health of the game's producer, sent it to development hell. Sega finally shelved the game in 1997. There is at least one known copy of a Sonic X-treme demo, which was sold at an auction.
StarCraft Ghost is a first-person shooter based on the StarCraft universe. The release of the game has been postponed six times already, although this is not entirely unusual with Blizzard Entertainment games. Game development started in mid-2001, with a release date of the 2002-2003 winter. During the summer of 2002, the entire Nihilistic Software development team, the original developer of the game, quit en masse after an internal power struggle with Blizzard Entertainment. At the time, Slashdot and Penny Arcade reported that the team had already completed more than 85% of the game engine and 40% of all level design.
Following the resignation, Blizzard pushed back the release date of the game to January of 2003, only to push it back to "early summer 2003" in October of 2002. Blizzard went out on the market to look for a new development team, while reassuring their customers that there was nothing to worry about, that Nihilistic Software had merely finished the job they were hired for, that there were no power struggles inside the company and that the game will be delivered on time.
By Christmas 2003, they had found their new development team, but they pushed the date even further backwards to "second quarter of 2004". Penny Arcade posted a comic on their site comparing the development timeline of StarCraft: Ghost to that of Duke Nukem Forever.
The game was announced at E3 2005, and the web page was updated for the first time in a year. Blizzard Entertainment also acquired Swingin' Ape Studios as part of a console-dominating strategy. These announcements seemed to have improved fan opinion of the game, but pushed the release date even further back to 2006.
In late March 2006, Blizzard Entertainment announced that the game has been "indefinitely postponed", following a focus on seventh-generation consoles.
After releasing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Silicon knights wanted to make a new project. It was originally in development for the PlayStation as a 5-disc action-RPG. It was shown at E3 1999. But shortly before its completion Nintendo announced an exclusive partnership with Silicon Knights, and the game was moved to the Nintendo GameCube in 2000. A teaser trailer was shown at SpaceWorld 2000 showing what appeared to be a re-building of the PlayStation game. The game never surfaced though, and the partnership between the two companies was ended. After this, the title was still thought to be in development for the GameCube, but those plans have since been cancelled. In the May 2005 issue of EGM, Silicon Knights announced a partnership with publisher Microsoft to develop a trilogy revolving around the Too Human universe exclusively for the Xbox 360. The game is being developed using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3, and is currently scheduled for release Q1 2007.
Role-Playing Games
After starting his own company, Green_Ronin_Publishing(GR), Chris Pramas announced that GR had been given (or purchased) back the rights to the wuxia-inspired asian martial arts movies influenced AD&D add-on ruleset and campaign world that he originally wrote for TSR/Wizards of the Coast; and that GR would publish a new version of the game.
A forum was soon set up at the GR web site (www.greenronin.com) where speculation about which rule-set would be utilized soon arose. Several times during 2004-2006 GR made announcements regarding the game's progress or details regarding its form, but no game has of yet materialized.
Dragon Fist has had a troubled history right from the start. It came right in the transition between AD&D and the (then) new Third Edition rules. This meant that Dragon Fist was never published on paper. It did reach the general public as a free PDF download for a limited time, before it was removed from the WotC website.
Recently, it has fallen between chairs again, in the aftermath of Green Ronin's troubles with a distributor, and because Green Ronin changed its plans for which ruleset to use.
As of 6 September 2006 the Dragon Fist forum at the Green Ronin website has been locked with the words: "As the game is currently still being developed, and because frankly there's nothing to say about it and this forum is currently only being occasionally used (and then only to complain) I'm locking it up for the time being. The Dragon Fist forum will re-open when there's information about the game that can be shared."