John Hughes's unrealized projects

The following is a list of unproduced John Hughes projects in roughly chronological order. Over the course of his career, American film director and writer John Hughes had worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage. Some of these productions fell into development hell or were officially cancelled, while others he decidedly dropped himself.

National Lampoon's Jaws: 3, People: 0
In 1979, Matty Simmons hired Hughes and Tod Carroll to write the script of the third Jaws film as a National Lampoon parody from Universal Pictures. According to Simmons, the film was to star Bo Derek and Richard Dreyfuss, and be directed by Joe Dante. Rodger Bumpass was also to appear in the film. However, Steven Spielberg, who directed the first film, managed to convince Universal not to make the film by threatening to never work with the studio again. Nevertheless, Simmons credits the unmade film as to how Hughes began his career in the film industry.

Motorheads vs. Sportos, a.k.a. Just Like Romeo and Juliet, a.k.a. Suburban Westside Story
In 1982, Hughes scripted a comedy/romance reworking of Romeo and Juliet for Paramount Pictures set in a Chicago high school about a romance that happens in the division between two feuding groups, the Motorheads and the Sportos. The idea later emerged in a speech by Edie McClurg in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).

The History of Ohio from the Beginning of Time to the End of the Universe
In the early 1980s, Hughes and P. J. O'Rourke scripted an unproduced adaptation of National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody which they titled The History of Ohio from the Beginning of Time to the End of the Universe. According to O'Rourke, "We never really got it to work and finally abandoned it. But it was fun to work together."

National Lampoon's The Joy of Sex: A Dirty Love Story
The Joy of Sex: A Dirty Love Story was initially set to be Penny Marshall's directorial debut and Hughes' first produced script, which consisted of several unrelated vignettes. However, as a result of the death of star John Belushi in 1982, Hughes' script was not used for the final film. It would eventually see release in 1983, titled Joy of Sex, but without the involvement of Marshall either.

Dallas Debs
In 1983, Hughes wrote a script titled Dallas Debs, a satire on Texas debutantes, which was due to enter production in spring 1984 through Aaron Spelling Productions, but nothing came of it.

Fallen Angel
In June 1984, Hughes finished the first draft of an original screenplay titled Fallen Angel. It is unclear whether Hughes had intended on directing the project as well.

The New Kid
During the 1980s, Hughes wrote a script titled The New Kid, and it was based on his experiences growing up. According to Kirk Honeycutt, author of John Hughes: A Life in Film, the story was "about a teenager's experiences in a new high school in Arizona." When Hughes offered Howard Deutch the choice to direct either The New Kid or Pretty in Pink (1986), Deutch chose to direct the latter film.

The Last Good Year
Anthony Michael Hall claimed that during the making of The Breakfast Club (1985), Hughes had an idea for a film which he titled The Last Good Year: "'At one point when we were doing The Breakfast Club, John had an idea for a movie called The Last Good Year. It was something that he pitched to me as something he wanted to do with me, about the last good year being 1962, before the Beatles invasion. Maybe it was a sarcastic title. The idea was, I think, that the cultural shift was significant to him—the crossover in time from Pat Boone America to Beatles America. He didn't have too many of the story elements worked out, but, man, did he have a mix tape put together.'"

Lovecats
Molly Ringwald claimed that after he finished The Breakfast Club (1985), Hughes had written a script based on The Cure song, "The Love Cats."

Oil and Vinegar
After he finished Pretty in Pink (1986), Hughes wrote the script of a film titled Oil and Vinegar, which was to star Matthew Broderick and Molly Ringwald. According to Inquisitr, Broderick and Ringwald were to portray a couple who "spend a day in a motel room, swapping stories on life and love." According to Broderick, "It was very intimate: it was just the two of them, basically, is my memory, often in a car. It was a very typical romantic comedy about two very different people who fell in love, but it was very inventive in its smallness."

The film was to have been released by Universal Pictures, but Hughes objected when the studio asked for rewrites. Therefore, the creative differences between Hughes and Universal, along with Broderick and Ringwald's scheduling conflicts, are credited for why the film was never made.

Bartholomew vs. Neff
In 1990, it was reported that Hughes would direct Sylvester Stallone and John Candy in a comedy he had written titled Bartholomew vs. Neff for Carolco Pictures. The film was to have been about feuding neighbors. Hughes had planned to direct the film right after he finished Curly Sue (1991). According to the Los Angeles Times, principal photography was scheduled to take place in the suburbs of Chicago during the summer of 1991. The film was never made.

The Nanny, The Bugster, and Ball 'n' Chain
In February 1991, it was reported that three new Hughes films were greenlit for production by new 20th Century Fox chairperson Joe Roth; The Nanny, The Bugster and Ball 'n' Chain, in addition to the already-shot Dutch (1991). Little is known about these proposed films other than that they were likely shelved after the underperformance of Dutch at the box office upon its release in July that year.

Black Cat Bone: The Return of Huckleberry Finn
In November 1991, it was reported that Hughes would write, produce and direct Black Cat Bone: The Return of Huckleberry Finn for 20th Century Fox. It was to have been about the character that was created by Mark Twain but be set in modern times. Principal photography for that film was scheduled to begin on March 16, 1992. However, it was reported that Hughes was competing against TriStar Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures, since both studios were also trying to make a Huckleberry Finn movie. Disney eventually succeeded over Fox and TriStar following the completion of The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993).

Peanuts
After four hand-drawn animated movies made by Cinema Center Films and Paramount Pictures, in 1992, it was reported that Hughes would write and produce a live action adaptation of Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts for Warner Bros. Hughes reportedly visited Schulz at his home in Santa Clara, California to talk about adapting Peanuts into a film. According to Variety, Hughes planned to start writing the script on Christmas of 1992 and finish it by the spring of 1993, Hughes also verified that he would not direct the film. It is believed that the critical failure of Dennis the Menace (1993), which Hughes wrote and produced for WB, is what prevented the movie from being made. A CGI film was finally released in 2015 by Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox Animation now owned by Disney.

The Pajama Game remake
Variety reported in 1992 that Hughes and Warner Bros. were to do a remake of the 1957 film The Pajama Game.

Damn Yankees remake
In 1993, Hughes reportedly wrote a script adapted from the musical Damn Yankees, but it never came to fruition.

The Bee
Due to the commercial success of Home Alone (1990), Hughes felt determined to make The Bee, a live action family comedy film that he wrote that required a $50 million budget. According to Daniel Stern, The Bee is about "an architect who was trying to finish his project that day and a bee comes into the house and the guy gets distracted by the bee. And the entire movie is the bee forcing the guy to destroy his own house and take his life apart." Author Kirk Honeycutt claimed that The Bee was inspired by Hughes "involvement in the development of Redwing Farms, where he worked to reforest the land and turn it into a proper English farm." It is said that of Hughes script, only ten pages of it contained dialogue.

The Bee was initially developed at 20th Century Fox, but by early 1993, Hughes sold the project to Warner Bros. after Fox passed on it. Then in May 1994, WB put the project in turnaround. By June that same year, it was officially announced that Hughes would write, produce and direct The Bee for Walt Disney Pictures with a budget of $25 million. Simon Brew credits Hughes's 1994 departure from Hollywood, along with the critical and financial failure of Baby's Day Out (1994), which he wrote and produced for Fox, as factors that led to the film's cancellation.

In later reports, Daniel Stern claimed that he was going to direct the film. According to Stern, Hughes visited him on the set of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), showed him the script of The Bee and asked him to direct it. Stern further claimed that he worked on the script with Hughes. It has also been reported that Steve Martin was considered to star in the film.

Dumb and Dumber
According to Hughes biographer Kirk Honeycutt, Hughes had originated the story for the 1994 comedy Dumb and Dumber, and had even written an incomplete screenplay draft before eventually deciding to sell it to the Farrelly brothers and requesting the removal of his name.

Tickets
In 1996, Hughes had written a script titled Tickets. According to Bradford Evans, "Tickets was a script that followed a group of teenage strangers camped out all night in zero degree weather for tickets to their favorite band’s farewell show." The script was never made into a film due to the release of the similarly themed film Detroit Rock City (1999).

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
In 1998, Hughes pitched a film version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! to various studios before it was adapted into the 2000 live-action film.

The Chambermaid
Hughes was the initial director of the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan (2002), a modern retelling of Cinderella then under the title The Chambermaid, with Hilary Swank at that time set to star as the lead. However, by 2001, it was reported that Jennifer Lopez had replaced Swank and that Hughes would no longer be directing the film, opting to produce instead. He would later use a pseudonym on the final film as a result of excessive rewrites which changed his initial screenplay story.

The Grigsbys Go Broke
In 2002, Hughes had written a script titled The Grigsbys Go Broke, which was about a wealthy family in Chicago who lose all of their money and are forced to move to the other side of the tracks. It was later reported in 2010 that Paramount Pictures bought the rights to the script. However, the studio officially confirmed that it was not negotiated to purchase the script. In 2013, the project was back in development at Paramount, and it was revealed that Ice Age: The Meltdown screenwriter Jim Hecht would rewrite the script. But, again, the film was left in development hell.

The Breakfast Club sequel
In 2005, Emilio Estevez was reported to have signed on to appear in a sequel to The Breakfast Club (1985), with Hughes being involved as a writer: "'John's got an idea for a sequel - mature aged students at college, all doing time again - for some reason or another. The twist would be that we're all the polar opposites of how we were in the original.'"

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
There was an online rumor that at one point, Hughes was going to write and direct an adaptation of the 1999 novel by Stephen Chbosky. It was said that Shia LaBeouf, Kirsten Dunst and Patrick Fugit were set to play Charlie, Sam and Patrick respectively. The film was also said to have a dark comedic tone. However, Hughes never completed a screenplay before his death nor it was confirmed that he was at one point making it before his death. The novel however was adapted and released in 2012 with Logan Lerman, Emma Watson and Ezra Miller playing the roles of Charlie, Sam and Patrick. The film was written and directed by the novel's author Stephen Chbosky.