Thornycroft wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 5:52 amThere's a New Zealand film called Prisoners (1982) that was bought for distribution by Paramount and then buried. It starred Tatum O'Neal, Colin Friels, and David Hemmings (who co-produced), along with plenty of local talent (like the omnipresent Bruno Lawrence). I've never found any information on whether post-production was ever finished, though a press kit supposedly exists, and I know someone who owns some original publicity stills. There's a persistent rumour that Ryan O'Neal disliked the finished product so much that he bought the rights in order to prevent its release, but I can't confirm that either way.beamish14 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 12:53 pmNot from a famous director, but novelist/famed screenwriter Bruce Wagner's first produced work was a teen comedy called Young Lust
that Paramount either elected to never release or possibly never actually completed. This is the only article I could find that lays out some information regarding it.
I'm fascinated by "lost" films produced by studios like this and Broken English (1981).
That's very interesting. I've heard about Prisoners a bit-I think there was discussion of it on the IMDB boards, and some people
insisted that it got some festival screenings or maybe even a test release at one or two theaters. Tatum had recently made the Circle of Two
with Richard Burton and Jules Dassin, which gained some notoriety.
Fox picked up a French film directed by Édouard Luntz called Hung Up (Le Grabuge) in 1973, but I'm unsure it was distributed anywhere. Perhaps we should eventually spin this off into a thread about films that studios refused to release!