Before it was retooled into a micro-budget $5 million horror film for the Blumhouse library, a live-action feature film adaptation of the classic Hasbro board game Ouija had been in development at Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes as a four-quadrant supernatural fantasy adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones, Jumanji, The Mummy, and Pirates of the Caribbean, with certain rules of the game — i.e. never use it alone, never use it in a graveyard, and always say goodbye — figuring into the plot. Elf and The Haunted Mansion scribe David Berenbaum was initially hired to write the script, which would later be retooled by the Tron: Legacy duo of Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Charlie's Angels helmer McG was hired to direct, having beaten out the likes of Breck Eisner, Pierre Morel, John Moore, Scott Stewart, and Sylvain White for the job. No doubt some of McG's frequent collaborators would've also joined in, including production designer Martin Laing and cinematographer Shane Hurlbut. When Kitsis and Horowitz were too busy with their commitments to ABC's Once Upon a Time, Evan Spiliotopoulos was brought on to rewrite their draft. Further revisions were provided by X-Men: The Last Stand and Mr. & Mrs. Smith scribe Simon Kinberg, who had previously worked with McG on the romantic action comedy This Means War. Kinberg's draft would've cost $125 million to produce; this didn't sit well with the higher-ups at Universal Pictures, which led to the studio abandoning this incarnation in the summer of 2012. The producers then had talks with Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox about tackling the film, as the former had established relationships with Bay and Hasbro and the latter had established relationships with McG and Kinberg. Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Marti Noxon was also brought on for further rewrites in order to scale the budget down, increase the horror elements, and make the story more intimate. Alas, a big-budget blockbuster take on the property was ultimately not meant to be. Follow me and ponder the question, "What if...?" Music: "Runner Runner" – Christophe Beck (Runner Runner) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btcPI_cCy2o

In the spring of 2004, it was announced that Cabin Fever helmer Eli Roth would be directing an original hard-R teen sex comedy for Universal Pictures and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura entitled Scavenger Hunt, which was inspired by true events that occurred during Roth's own high school years. Described as The Cannonball Run meets Caligula, the story — scripted by Roth and revised by The Dukes of Hazzard scribe Jonathan L. Davis — concerns a group of overachieving teenagers, some of the best and brightest students in their classes, who are all set to graduate and go to prestigious Ivy League colleges such as Harvard and Yale, but when the enormous amount of pressure they're already under becomes too much for them to possibly take, they suddenly snap and go berserk. The kids embark on a senior scavenger hunt, partaking in an insanity-fueled night and trashing both themselves and their hometown, participating in a variety of balls-out pranks and challenges such as breaking out into impromptu orgies in front of judges, drinking shots of seminal fluid, defecating in public, and causing massive amounts of property damage. Roth's goal was to make the most twisted, over-the-top teen sex comedy in the history of the sub-genre, deliberately pushing the boundaries of good taste and paying homage to earlier entries in the genre such as Bob Clark's Porky's. No doubt many of Roth's frequent collaborators would've also joined in, including score composer Nathan Barr, production and costume designer Franco-Giacomo Carbone, film editors George and Ryan Folsey, and cinematographer Milan Chadima. However, Roth eventually pushed the project aside to instead make Hostel, and no further news would ever come of the project. Follow me and ponder the question, "What if...?" Music: "Party Out of Bounds" – The B-52's (Wild Planet) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr9IosQIN-8