In the fall of 2010, it was announced that famed comedian Sacha Baron Cohen would be portraying legendary musician Freddie Mercury in a Queen biopic for Sony's Columbia Pictures, Graham King and Tim Headington's GK Films, and Jane Rosenthal and Robert de Niro's TriBeCa Productions. The film was a passion project for Cohen, having personally recruited acclaimed playwright Peter Morgan to pen the screenplay, envisioning it as a gritty, raunchy hard-R tell-all about Mercury's life, career, drug use, partying, and sexuality. Cohen also pursued renowned directors such as David Fincher and Tom Hooper, with Stephen Frears ultimately winning the job in the summer of 2012. Morgan's script would also undergo a rewrite by biopic veterans Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. Alas, Cohen's vision for an authentic cinematic retelling of Mercury's story ultimately was not meant to be, as band members Brian May and Roger Taylor, wanting to "protect" the brand, pushed for a more sanitized, family-friendly film in which the first half would end with Mercury's tragic death while the second half would see the band carrying on. Due to creative differences, Cohen departed the project, with Anthony McCarten being hired to write a new script in November of 2015 and the film subsequently moving over from Sony to 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises. Follow me and ponder the question, "What if...?" Music: "The Outfit" – Alexandre Desplat (The Outfit) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjXJnmg22S8

Said to be one of the greatest films never made was a third installment in the original Hellboy film franchise, based on the Dark Horse comic book series of the same name created by Mike Mignola, to have once again been written and directed by visionary auteur Guillermo del Toro and star Ron Perlman as the title character, who — in order to defend humanity from the greatest threat he's ever gone up against — must finally come to terms with the fact that his his inevitable destiny is to become the beast of the Apocalypse. On top of that, the twin offspring Hellboy has with Liz Sherman would share the qualities of both of their parents, with one devilish and corrupt and the other angelic and innocent. Del Toro planned this as a grand finale to his take on the character and the mythos, with a much darker tone and a proposed budget of $120 million. He also discussed the possibility of developing the film at Legendary Pictures — with Universal Pictures once again distributing after having previously released Hellboy II: The Golden Army, taking over for Sony's Columbia Pictures and Revolution Studios — and stated that the company might fund the film if his Gothic romance Crimson Peak and his planned Pacific Rim sequel, then-subtitled Maelström, were financial successes. However, the former underwhelmed at the box office and Del Toro eventually dropped out of helming the latter — which was subsequently retooled by replacement director Steven S. DeKnight and multiple new writers into the critically and commercially unsuccessful Pacific Rim: Uprising — which meant that the deal between him and Legendary fell through. With Hellboy III cancelled, Mignola and producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin opted to move forward with a reboot of the series at Lionsgate and Millennium Films, which was ultimately one of the biggest bombs of 2019 as well as one of that year's worst-reviewed films. Follow me and ponder the question, "What if...?" Music: "Batman on the Roof" – Danny Elfman (Justice League) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPOUUg72dbY

The high-concept sci-fi thriller Gemini Man had been in varying stages of development since the late 1990's, when the original western-influenced screenplay by Darren Lemke was first set up at Disney's Touchstone Pictures with visionary action filmmaker Tony Scott directing, Don Murphy and Jane Hamsher producing, and Harrison Ford and Chris O'Donnell considered to star as the main character and his younger clone, respectively. Over the years, Lemke's script would undergo various rewrites by the likes of Brian Helgeland, Jonathan Hensleigh, Andrew Niccol, Billy Ray, and the team of Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, turning it much more of a contemporary action film. The closest the project ever came to getting off the ground at Disney was in the late 2000's when it was reported that the late great Curtis Hanson would be helming the project from the latest draft of the script at the time, which was penned by future Game of Thrones veteran David Benioff, with blockbuster action producer Jerry Bruckheimer also joining as the new main producer through his self-named production company. Hanson and his production partner Carol Fenelon would also serve as producers — alongside Bruckheimer and Scott — through their Deuce Three shingle, with Benioff and Murphy serving as executive producers alongside Michael Fottrell, Chad Oman, Mike Stenson, and Barry Waldman. After the idea of casting Ford and O'Connell was nixed, Disney and the producers toyed with the idea of an actor playing both roles through the use of extensive visual effects, even going so far as to develop a series of tests to create complex effects involving the creation of a younger computer-generated clone of whatever actor they desired as the lead. With the recent release of the multiple Oscar-winning The Curious Case of the Benjamin Button, it seemed like the impossible could finally be made possible. Nicolas Cage was said to be attached to the project around this time, but just when it was about to go into production, Cage convinced Bruckheimer and Disney to instead produce The Sorcerer's Apprentice. As if that wasn't enough, the technology still wasn't advanced enough to accomplish the kind of effects they were looking for. Ultimately, the film never materialized at the studio, and would eventually be acquired by Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media sometime in 2016, with Ang Lee hired to direct the following year. Follow me and ponder the question, "What if...?" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X22EHxEswo

Set to premiere simultaneously in theaters and on Peacock this Halloween season is the upcoming sixth installment in the Exorcist franchise, The Exorcist. Directed by David Gordon Green and co-written with Danny McBride, Peter Sattler, and Scott Teems, the film — which will be a legacyquel to the 1973 film of the same name, disregarding every other installment in the series, and the first chapter of a new trilogy — stars Leslie Odom, Jr. as the father of a possessed child; desperate for help, he goes in search of Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), who has had similar experiences in the past. Co-starring Ann Dowd, Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum, Raphael Sbarge, Jennifer Nettles, and Okwui Okpokwasili, the film will be produced by series veteran James G. Robinson, his son David, and Jason Blum, with Green and McBride serving as executive producers alongside Couper Samuelson, Ryan Turek, and Christopher H. Warner. The production crew includes special make-up effects designer Christopher Nelson, costume designers Lizz Wolf and Barbara Vazquez, production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly, and director of photography Michael Simmonds. A joint-venture production between Morgan Creek, Blumhouse, and Rough House Pictures, the film will be released on October, Friday the 13th by Universal Pictures. Music: "Tubular Bells" – Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy8O5m1698c