Spike Lee Movies We'll Never Get To See

Spike Lee has worked with a lot of big-name actors, including Denzel Washington, Edward Norton, and Josh Brolin. However, there was a point in the 2000s where it looked like Lee was poised to snag his biggest-name leading man yet. In 2006, it appeared that Tom Cruise was eyeballing a thriller named "Selling Time," which would have been directed by Lee, as one of his next projects. "Selling Time" would've been a high-concept project for 20th Century Fox concerning a guy (to be played by Cruise) who attempts to alter a particularly awful day in his past by selling parts of his life. Tackling this production would have continued Cruise's recurring forays into sci-fi territories and his penchant for working with famous auteurs, as seen by his collaborations with Brian De Palma, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Stanley Kubrick.

Despite fitting snugly into Cruise's career, "Selling Time" disappeared from the news. Of the leading roles Cruise was looking at in 2006, the only one he ever starred in was "Lions for Lambs." After that, Cruise's schedule got filled up with projects like "Valkyrie" and "Knight and Day." As for Lee, he also kept busy and shifted gears from "Selling Time" to "Miracle at St. Anna." A Cruise and Lee collaboration would fit right in with the overall career trajectories of both artists, but circa 2006, it seems neither of them found the time to turn that prospect into a reality. It seemed like director D.J. Caruso was going to pick up the film in 2014 with Will Smith as the lead, but that never came to fruition, either. 

In 2013, Chadwick Boseman launched his movie career with the Jackie Robinson biopic "42." That film was helmed by Brian Helgeland (best known for "A Knight's Tale"), but, in the 1990s, an early incarnation of this feature was meant to be helmed by somebody very different: Spike Lee. In 1996, the production, which didn't have a title at the time, was announced to be aiming for a 1997 release and starring Denzel Washington as the trailblazing baseball player.

However, by 1997, news of Lee setting up shop to direct movies for Sony/Columbia Pictures also delivered the update that Lee's Jackie Robinson movie had fallen apart. The biggest issue the project faced at this point was that Washington apparently felt he was too old to play Robinson, so he dropped out of the film. This left Lee's biopic without a big-name actor. It would take more than a decade for this production to eventually morph into "42," which managed to overcome its turmoil-filled production to become a major hit. However, Lee's contributions to this feature have not been entirely lost to time. Lee delivered a gift in the spring of 2020 to those curious about what might have been by posting his screenplay for his Jackie Robinson movie onto the internet. Even if people can't watch it, at least the curious can read Lee's expansive biopic.

In 2010, Samuel L. Jackson made headlines by revealing that Spike Lee was stewing on a new feature film project with the bold title "Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson." "He's written a movie about these folks who want to have a big concert in a Brooklyn park for Michael," Jackson explained to NBC New York. "And the new gentrified people that live in the neighborhood are worried about the kind of element that might be coming into the neighborhood." At the time, Jackson said he was planning to star in the proposed feature film while also remarking that Lee had been fixated on Jackson for a while now. Jackson also expressed hope that Julianne Moore would join the project as his character's wife. 

ShowBiz411, meanwhile, reported an inside source claiming that not only had Moore been cast in the film, but "Do the Right Thing" cast members John Turturro and Rosie Perez were also on board. Bringing so many notable actors from his past work would seem to make "Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson" an important project for Lee. However, just a year later, IndieWire reported an account from a live Q&A with Lee where the filmmaker was asked about "Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson" and said that the feature wasn't happening. Lee never divulged why this film wasn't going forward, though Samuel L.'s enthusiasm for the production makes it clear it wasn't because of a reluctant cast. 

One of George Gershwin's most famous operas, "Porgy & Bess," has endured as a staple of the stage. The property hasn't had an easy life when it comes to being translated into a motion picture. A 1959 feature from director Otto Preminger scored raves from critics but was lambasted by Gershwin and his estate, and writers like James Baldwin were heavily critical of the adaptation. Meanwhile, attempts to adapt it into film in the 21st century have been plagued with problems—even the one that Spike Lee was supposed to deliver.

In 2012, it was announced that Lee was interested in helming a new motion picture version of "Porgy & Bess." The prospect of Lee directing a cinematic opera is certainly an intriguing one, especially since his works so often rely exclusively on music. However, no further movements occurred for this iteration of the project. Lee's take on "Porgy & Bess" was officially considered dead at the start of 2020 when it was announced that Dee Rees was tackling a new film adaptation of the property for MGM. 

After stepping back for a year or two after 9/11 out of respect, Hollywood began producing intense thrillers that dealt with the War on Terror or explored the possibility of a terrorist attack occurring on American soil. Projects like "Green Zone" and "Body of Lies" aimed to be topical affairs that lured in moviegoers in droves; instead, the general public largely rejected them. Many issues were keeping these titles from flourishing financially, including the fact that many of them scored mixed reviews (the kiss of death for adult dramas). The events these features were chronicling were so rampantly present on cable news networks, why would people want to pay for a ticket to see more of them?

At one point, Spike Lee was aiming to inject some life into this subgenre with "Nagasaki Deadline," a thriller for Alcon Entertainment that saw an FBI agent trying to thwart a pair of domestic terrorist attacks that could be tied into important events from the past. No further updates ever emerged on "Nagasaki Deadline," and the filmmaker has never spoken on social media about what his vision could've looked like. We'll never know if a filmmaker of Lee's talents could've overcome the apathy that greeted most other relevant political thrillers from the first decade of American cinema after 9/11.

Spike Lee's played with many familiar mainstream genes in his decades as a filmmaker of note. One area he's avoided, though, is the world of big-budget superhero movies. For a brief moment, though, it appeared he might dabble in it. In the spring of 2018, news broke that Lee was in talks to direct a movie based on the character Nightwatch for Sony Pictures. Largely seen as evocative of fellow 1990s superhero Spawn, the project had been in development since the spring of 2016. It was intended to be part of Sony's bigger plans for expanding their reach in the world of superhero media, alongside such productions as "Venom" and "Morbius."

Working with a filmmaker as iconic as Lee would have lent legitimacy to Sony's forays into superhero storytelling. However, months after the news first broke, Lee commented on the development in October 2018 to ScreenRant, simply saying "nah" when the "Nightwatch" project came up. With that single word, the prospect of the director of "Do the Right Thing" becoming a part of the superhero movie landscape evaporated. The "Nightwatch" movie has withered away, with no further developments emerging on the production and Sony moving on to adapting other Marvel characters like Kraven the Hunter.