So this is great: The once-excellent Premiere magazine (it’s now online only, which is sad) has a rundown of “20 Movies Not Coming Soon to a Theater Near You.” They’re all weird, awesome, or promising-sounding films that have been rumored, half-made, or dreamt up… yet never completed. Some sound great (like Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s “epic about the battles between art and commerce, history and the future, told through the architectural restructuring of New York City”), some sound terrible (like Used Guys, a comedy “about a world where men had been eradicated and replaced by ‘pleasure clones’—two of whom would be played by [Ben] Stiller and [Jim] Carrey”), and all are fascinating. A couple of highlights:

The Onion Movie The Onion Movie was actually produced, but you won’t find any trace of it on IMDB. The trail of tears begins back in late 2003, when the minds behind the satirical rag signed with Fox Searchlight to make a no-holds-barred sketch-comedy movie. Under the guidance of producer and well known spoofer David Zucker of Airplane fame, The Onion’s then-editor Robert Siegel and writer Todd Hanson penned a script that tackled cultural mores with skits called “Who Is the Rapist?” and even convinced Steven Seagal to play himself as a superhero named “Cock Puncher.” Fox Searchlight didn’t see the humor. Now the only evidence that the film even exists is a review on the website JoBlo from a reader who “wanted to poke my eyes out” after seeing a test screening.

Hit the jump for a few more.

A Confederacy of Dunces Back in the early '80s as an executive a Fox, [producer Scott] Kramer had set up an adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning, New Orleans-set character study of the portly underachiever Ignatius J. Reilly, starring John Belushi and Richard Pryor and set to be directed by Harold Ramis. Now Will Ferrell, Mos Def, and All the Real Girls' David Gordon Green picked up where they had left off by participating in a public table-read of the Confederacy adaptation, co-written by Kramer and Steven Soderbergh and set to start filming by the end of the year. But as is wont to happen on films with the eccentricity of Confederacy, Paramount shuffled their feet, even with Ferrell and Drew Barrymore onboard, and Dunces was done in by studio ambivalence and issues concerning ownership of the book rights.

[This one's been a particular interest of mine--a few months ago I read the book, and it instantly became one of my favorite books ever. Slate.com also has an amazing article about the troubled project, which goes into great detail, including a list of the slew of doomed comedians who were once slated to play Ignatius J. Reilly: John Candy, Chris Farley, John Belushi.]

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius True to its ambitious title, Dave Eggers' memoir of his unexpected guardianship of his eight-year-old brother after both their parents die of cancer was hailed by critics in 2000, became a bestseller, and ultimately became the subject of a bidding war between New Line and Miramax. Eggers chose New Line after the studio offered him $2 million, complete creative control, and the right to cowrite the screenplay. New Line could also offer Paul Thomas Anderson, who had just completed Magnolia for the studio and could possibly lure Tom Cruise to star. But once About a Boy author Nick Hornby and High Fidelity scribe D.V. DeVincentis turned in a script, New Line made the heartbreaking move to put the film into turnaround.

Some of these could be great. And who knows? A few months ago, the fourth Indiana Jones would have been on this list, since Lucas and Spielberg have been talking about doing it ever since Last Crusade. To everyone's surprise, that project starts filming this summer. The moral? Never say never. Except maybe to seeing The Onion Movie.