15 Films With Premises That Would Have Been Close to Unimaginable to Pitch

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A number of the most enjoyable, fascinating, and troubling films to observe will need to have been the toughest to pitch to any financiers. One movie fan asks on-line what films folks suppose would have been a tricky uphill battle to get folks on board, for no matter cause. 

1- Tenet (2020) 

Tenet Robert Pattinson
Picture Credit score: Warner Bros. Photos.

Christopher Nolan has been in love with the idea of time since his debut function Following refused to observe a linear narrative construction. However the top of his affair with time got here with Tenet, a movie that even individuals who have seen it a number of instances can’t fairly clarify as a result of its sci-fi premise about expertise that enables folks to maneuver ahead and backward in time is so difficult.

Who is aware of how he may have pitched it? Fortunate for him, he’s Christopher Nolan and doesn’t must pitch his concepts anymore. 

2- Footloose (1984)

Footloose Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer
Picture Credit score: Paramount Photos.

All the premise of Footloose asks the viewers to imagine that each member of a city council, satisfied by their beloved Reverend, would vote to outlaw dancing together with clearly extra harmful and fairly regulated actions like drug and alcohol use. It’s a easy premise, one which’s simple to speak, but it surely’s hilarious that sufficient folks thought it appeared like an affordable sufficient premise to make right into a film. 

3- Eraserhead (1977)

Eraserhead Movie
Picture Credit score: AFI Middle for Superior Research.

A number of film lovers agree that David Lynch’s function debut, Eraserhead, will need to have been virtually inconceivable to pitch. The movie facilities on a younger man whose girlfriend provides start to a wierd creature that appears extra like a child dinosaur than a child human. As he struggles to take care of the creature, he has a number of desires (or visions?) a few lady with a moonlike face who lives in his radiator and sings him songs. It’s a fantastic film, however I’d must agree that it couldn’t have been simple to pitch. 

4- Swiss Military Man (2016)

Swiss Army Man
Picture Credit score: A24.

 Swiss Military Man is a ridiculous film whose allure is simply how ridiculous it’s. Pitching it might be tough, however fortunately, somebody accepted. 

5- Life is Stunning (1997)

Life is Beautiful
Picture Credit score: Miramax.

A number of folks level out the issue of promoting the concept of Life is Stunning, a comedy that facilities on an Italian-Jewish father and son held in a Nazi focus camp and the daddy’s makes an attempt to persuade his son that the whole lot round them is a part of an elaborate recreation. That’s proper; it’s a comedy that takes place in a focus camp, 

6- Happiness (1998)

Happiness Philip Seymour Hoffman
Picture Credit score: Good Machine Releasing.

One viewer expresses shock that the 1998 film Happiness was made. And it is smart to be shocked; the film tells the tales of assorted folks’s intertwining lives, together with a person who anonymously harasses girls over the telephone, a pedophile, and a sexual assault survivor who retains her attacker’s eliminated genitals within the freezer. What makes the movie much more stunning is that it’s a comedy. 

7- Sorry To Trouble You (2017)

Sorry to Bother You
Picture Credit score: Annapurna Photos.

Sorry to Trouble You is a tough film to explain with out gifting away its most out-there plot developments. However its primary premise is {that a} Black telemarketer learns he’s much more profitable when he places on a “white voice.” 

8- Face/Off (1997)

Face/Off John Travolta Nicolas Cage
Picture Credit score: Paramount HE.

Face/Off brings collectively two actors (John Travolta and Nicolas Cage) in methods no different film had earlier than or has since. The movie options the celebrities’ characters actually switching faces, resulting in a film the place each actors are doing impressions of each other of their performances. It’s additionally only a nice motion film, but it surely’s that face-swapping half that may’ve been a bit tough to get folks on board with. 

9- Being John Malkovich (1999)

Being John Malkovich
Picture Credit score: USA Movies.

Many individuals cite Being John Malkovich as a movie that will need to have been a wild film to pitch, provided that it necessitates the involvement of a well-known and celebrated actor. And never solely that however a celebrated and well-known actor keen to make jokes about themselves and ship an usually foolish efficiency. One way or the other, all of the items got here collectively for this film a few man who discovers a portal into John Malkovich’s thoughts. 

10- My Dinner With Andre (1981)

My Dinner with Andre Wallace Shawn, Jean Lenauer
Picture Credit score: New Yorker Movies.

The premise of My Dinner with Andre is easy sufficient: two males have dinner and a dialog about numerous matters, together with theater, spirituality, and life on the whole. The tough a part of pitching the movie can be answering the query: why would folks wish to watch that? Who is aware of how the creators answered that query, however folks definitely did wish to watch it, and it’s change into one of the celebrated and iconic movies of the Eighties. 

11- Titane (2022)

Titane Agathe Rousselle
Picture Credit score: Diaphana Distribution.

As soon as once more, I’ll defer to a commenter. This time one who coated most of their reply with spoiler redaction however left their description of Titane as “a serial killer is impregnated by a automobile” seen to all. The truth that there’s extra that makes the movie so splendidly unusual couldn’t have made it any simpler to pitch. 

12- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

seven brides
Picture Credit score: MGM.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a Western musical adaptation of the legendary story of the kidnapping of the Sabine girls through which seven brothers kidnap and pressure seven girls from a close-by city to be their wives. Not a dour musical like Les Misérables, thoughts you, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a spirited, brightly coloured, and enjoyable one which options among the finest dancing setpieces ever set to movie. How this was pitched, we’ll by no means know, but it surely’s much more exceptional that it kinda works? 

13- Again to the Future (1985)

Back To The Future Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd
Picture Credit score: Common Photos.

The absurdity of Again to the Future is now broadly joked about, usually in reference to John Mulaney’s bit, and it is smart. It’s a film that contains a teen who’s finest mates with an outdated mad scientist and, after touring again in time, should keep away from the advances of his mom. To be truthful, as one consumer factors out, the movie was rejected by studios for years earlier than being greenlit. 

14- It Follows (2014)

It Follows Maika Monroe
Picture Credit score: RADiUS-TWC.

It Follows is one other movie with a reasonably easy-to-explain premise; there’s a sexually transmitted demon that can kill whoever it’s at the moment connected to if it catches them. Nevertheless it’s such a excessive idea it’s a surprise anybody took the gamble on making it. Good factor they did, although, as a result of it’s one of the beloved horror films of the twenty first century so far. 

15- The Home That Jack Constructed (2018)

The House That Jack Built Matt Dillon, Riley Keough
Picture Credit score: TrustNordisk.

The Home that Jack Constructed follows a serial killer by 5 completely different homicide sequences, one thing that’s simple sufficient to grasp as a premise for a movie. However its remaining flip into the supernatural (or is it mythic?), through which the character follows the Roman poet Virgil by hell à la Dante’s Inferno, couldn’t have been simple to get financiers on board with. For that matter, neither may the content material of the homicide sequences, which embrace youngster homicide and detailed physique mutilation and but, the film exists. 

Supply: (Reddit)


Kyle Logan is a movie and tv critic and normal popular culture author who has written for Various Press, Cultured Vultures, Movie Tales, Display screen Anarchy, and extra. Kyle is especially concerned with horror and animation, in addition to style movies written and directed by queer folks and ladies. Kyle is a member of the Chicago Indie Critics and together with writing, organizes a Queer Movie Problem on Letterboxd.


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