Greedy Studios Desperately Tried To KILL These Movies

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Sometimes movie studios spend big bucks making a movie only to turn around and do everything they can to stop you from seeing it. Today we're talking about movies the studios tried to suppress. In one case, they spent millions just to legally destroy the prince of a Marvel movie. Harvey Weinstein faced protest for holding back multiple films on this list, and that was long before he was outed for being a disgusting creep. One movie on this list almost disappeared entirely before becoming a modern-day prophecy. So, we're not talking about crappy little flops buried by the studios. These are all movies I strongly recommend with one exception. But, let's get started with a Nicholas Cage classic that was almost doomed to be a made for TV movie with Red Rock West.

[00:00:51]>> I thought you were supposed to be here last Friday.

[00:00:55]I was beginning to think I'd have to find somebody else.

[00:01:00]You are here for the job, aren't you?

[00:01:02]>> Where Cage plays a drifter in Texas who is mistaken for a hitman. He wanders into a dive bar and someone thinks he's there for a secret meeting and he decides to kind of go with it. He wants to see where this thing is headed and it makes for a great little West Texas thriller in the vein of something like Blood Simple or No Country for Old Men.

[00:01:23]>> This is a joke, right?

[00:01:26]>> I'm afraid not. It also stars Laura Flynn Bole and Dennis Hopper as a fantastic bad guy. He played a bunch of characters like this in the mid '9s.

[00:01:35]This is just another one, but a good one. But the studio had low to no confidence in this movie. In fact, the test screenings didn't go well. So, they actually released it on HBO. You could watch this movie on HBO before it ever hit a theater. But there were some people passionate behind the scenes that really pushed to get it put into one theater where it actually broke some records, sold out, and then spread out from there and actually got a decent theatrical release basically by word of mouth, something you almost never hear of anymore. And for good reason. It's a solid West Texas thriller with Nicholas Cage. If you've ever liked any Nicholas Cage movie, this is a great one. He's not doing anything, you know, over the top. In fact, if you like over-the-top Nicholas Cage, Red Rock West might be a bit disappointing. It was free on YouTube just a few weeks ago. It can be a bit elusive on streaming, but it does show up from time to time. Now, next, we've got a horror movie that actually stars Bradley Cooper. It's the only one he ever did, and it got buried despite the fact that it's from the mind of Clive Barker, who created Hellraiser and Night Breed. But Midnight Meat Train got derailed at the last minute quite literally. This movie was set for a big theatrical release and Clive Barker has spoken out about it publicly multiple times. Studio politics basically got in the way of this one and it got paired down to a very small release essentially making it a straight to video fine. Most people were not going to have access to see this in the theater and there were fans of Clive Barker that were outraged when this thing essentially got shelved.

[00:03:12]And again, in this case, it's not because it was a bad movie or had bad test screenings. I've got one of those coming up. But like I said, it's the only horror flick starring Bradley Cooper. I don't really consider Nightmare Alley to be much of a horror movie, much more of a mystery movie. But in this one, he plays a photographer in New York City who begins to notice something weird on the subway, and he tries to investigate. And something weird is definitely going on. Vinnie Jones, of all people, is killing people on this train at night. And that's just the setup. Midnight Meat Train gets so much weirder. If you've liked anything Clive Barker has ever done and this gym somehow escaped you, you've got to go check it out. And it does have a cult following. It's a movie I've liked and recommended over the years. But I think it would have had an even bigger cult following if it got the theatrical release it deserved and was honestly scheduled for. Next up, we've got a famous case where a studio spent millions and millions just to destroy this movie after it was finished. Before that, I'll point out that I normally focus on a specific streaming service like Netflix or Prime, but this list is all over the place. In fact, some of these may not even be available in your country, but you can still access them using today's sponsor, NordVPN, the fastest VPN 2 provider with enhanced privacy for safer browsing experience, protecting you from nasty things like fishing, scams, and malware. Nord is all about giving you control. You get the peace of mind knowing that your internet connection is encrypted and your devices are shielded from malware and snoopers, meaning your digital life belongs to you. I love that Nord helps keep your browsing safe and secure all in the background, but they can also help you access movies in other countries. Now, this was designed for travel. That way, you can keep binge watching your Netflix shows while you're overseas. And again, NordVPN is going to keep all of your browsing safe and secure. To get 76% off, plus 4 months free, go to my link in the video description or just type in nordvpn.com/flick connection. That's a huge discount, but they also have a 30-day money back guarantee, so there's no risk if for some reason you don't like using it. But if you use it the way I do, I can almost guarantee you're going to love it.

[00:05:27]Again, go to nordvpn.com/flickconnection to get that discount on a product I strongly recommend. But speaking of strong recommendations, we got to get back to these movies. In 1994, legendary BM movie director Roger Corman made a version of the Fantastic 4. Now, the story with this one is that a movie had to be made quickly so that the studio didn't lose the rights to Marvel's Fantastic 4. If they hadn't created anything by a certain date, they were going to lose these rights. So, they made this fast and loose, cheesy Roger Corman Fantastic 4 movie, and they finished it. They even cut a trailer. It was essentially about to be released and promoted. And it ended up being so terrible that a Marvel executive actually spent millions of dollars to acquire the rights to the final print only to then destroy it. It was reportedly so terrible that it was going to damage the Marvel brand in irreparable ways, ways that were worth them spending all the money to destroy a project that they'd already spent tons of money on. The trailer looks incredible. This is one of those legendary cases, how they even had jokes about it in Arrested Development.

[00:06:41]>> Daddy needs to get his rocks off.

[00:06:42]>> And it's kind of a running cultural joke, too, within the Marvel community.

[00:06:46]I guess every single Fantastic 4 movie, and there have been a bunch of them since. I think four since this one, they're all pretty bad. And the rumor is that they keep making them because they're going to lose the rights. It all goes back to this particular case. And this is still going on today. Warner Brothers just a couple of years ago canned the Batgirl movie after it was finished, or at least after it was finished filming. But a movie that Harvey Weinstein tried to make sure never saw the light of day is now a classic Star Wars fanboy comedy titled Fanboys.

[00:07:22]>> Uh Darth Vader has asthma. So, uh name me one Star Trek character with a respiratory disease cuz I'm drawing a blank.

[00:07:30]>> This one is actually about a group of guys trying to go see The Phantom Menace episode 1 of Star Wars. They're trying to see it early before its big release in 1999 because one of them, they're all close friends and one of them has terminal cancer. And that is what Harvey Weinstein tried to remove from the movie. It's literally the pulse and the heartbeat of this movie because these lifelong friends are all raid Star Wars nuts and they cannot wait for the Phantom Menace to come out, but their buddy is not going to make it to the release of The Phantom Menace. So, it's a road trip movie. They're literally going to Skywalker Ranch to try to get a screening of the Phantom Menace before he dies. Weinstein strongly felt they needed to remove the cancer angle. Did not want to mix terminal illness with comedy, which on paper kind of makes sense. Like if you were to just read it, it doesn't sound like something that would work. But Fanboys is a fantastic movie, especially for anyone that has any kind of like fandom. Even if you're not that super into Star Wars, if you've been like a big geek for anything, there's a lot you can connect with with this movie. Especially if you were a geek over something with friends, I think you can connect with this movie even more. And the terminal cancer stuff, like I said, it's the the heartbeat of the movie. And it doesn't really kill the comedy. They're not making light of cancer. If anything, you know, it's a bunch of shenanigans and goofiness going on as these buddies are trying to grant their friend his dying wish. And there's also a lot of funny people in it. A lot of geeky humor. Some Star Trek humor in there as well. It's very funny. It's a shame it effectively got shelved because Harvey Weinstein thought it was, you know, inappropriate of of all people to think something was inappropriate.

[00:09:14]>> God, you're sexy and well-versed. I like it.

[00:09:19]Oh, >> okay. Guards.

[00:09:20]>> That's okay.

[00:09:21]>> Okay, that's all I got.

[00:09:23]>> Let's go.

[00:09:24]>> Now, I've ranked these in terms of how strongly I recommend them, but the next two were casualties of the Fox Disney merger that happened a few years back.

[00:09:34]First up, we've got Underwater, a movie that was completed in 2017, right before that merger, and then basically became an orphan. Once Disney acquired Fox, they didn't really know what to do with this underwater horror flick. Or at least it was a low priority for Disney when they acquired Fox and it effectively got shelved for years. And then when it was finally released, they dumped it in the middle of January. Kind of a common dumping ground for movies that they don't really care if you see or not. It's very seldom that a studio will release a movie they're proud of in the month of January. It's been that way forever. They essentially released this one, tried to kill it on site because it was just something the new company was not invested in. They had no ties to it.

[00:10:22]If anything, it was a problem they just kind of needed to get off the books.

[00:10:26]Now, the movie was kind of panned critically. I think too many people made too many comparisons to Alien. And it's really not that type of movie. It's a little bit more of a standard horror flick. And if you look at it that way versus comparing it to a masterpiece like Alien just because it aesthetically has some things in common. If you look at it like a bit more of a basic monster movie, it's an awesome wild ride with a bunch of great scenes. It's a shame they buried this thing. I think it punches well above its weight, especially when you consider how they released it or, you know, failed to release it. But another horror movie that was a casualty of that merger is a really smart one that they mismarketed, mismanaged, and I think too many people overlooked the empty man.

[00:11:10]>> You can hear him, can't you? Squirming his way into your thoughts like a disease.

[00:11:19]>> Now, this one is kind of presented as like a teen urban legend horror. Nothing really that exciting or new, and that's not what it is. This is a dark cosmic horror movie with some cutting edge concepts that again just kind of went into the dust bin and were forgotten.

[00:11:36]Now, horror fans did discover this movie. It developed kind of a cult following despite its lackluster release. At the same time, it's such a trippy cosmic horror movie. I think people that were expecting that basic teen urban legend horror thing were just completely confused by The Empty Man.

[00:11:56]So, if you like horror movies that you have to think about that really can kind of get under your skin, this is a fantastic one and it's from a firsttime director. It's actually a guy who worked on multiple David Finchure films and he's obviously a David Fincher fan. This looks and feels like David Fincher and has some qualities that you get from David Fincher films as well. Again, just a completely overlooked gem I love recommending here. And it also happens to be pretty damn scary.

[00:12:29]And now we'll jump from those scary movies to a comedy that has become the most prophetic comedy maybe in the history of film making. That's not an exaggeration. Yet Idiocracy almost never saw the light of day. The studio desperately tried to kill this one. Now, it could have been from poor test screenings or really just the fact that the small group of executives making these decisions didn't get the jokes in this movie.

[00:12:56]>> If you have one bucket that holds two gallons and another bucket that holds five gallons, how many buckets do you have?

[00:13:04]>> Two. I will point out though in Idiocracy, there are a lot of brand names mentioned and made fun of and I believe that also played a role in the studios skittishness to release this thing.

[00:13:16]>> Welcome to Costco. I love you. Welcome to Costco. I love you.

[00:13:21]>> So, they fulfilled their contract. So, they had to put it in some theaters, but they put it in the minimal amount of theaters and literally released no press packets, no ads, nothing was released for this movie. It was essentially released in the dark of night. And it's so good and so funny. It has snowballed into not just a cult comedy, but people literally look at this movie like prophecy. And I'll say just as a movie nut, it's also a highly rewatchable comedy. And that's secretary of education.

[00:13:56]>> It's kind of stupid, but President Kamacho's stepbrother still does a pretty good job, man.

[00:14:02]>> And the jokes, you know, over time, they don't wear thin the way they can in so many other comedies. And to make things even weirder, this is written and directed by Mike Judge, who's famous for Beas and Buttad, King of the Hill, and his liveaction movie Office Space, which also didn't do well on its release, but it had already snowballed into a cult classic by 2006 when Iracy released. So, that makes it even weirder that they buried this insanely funny film. Now, my number three pick is kind of a weird one. It's now a cult classic sci-fi movie. A movie I really love that's got incredible action in it and some bigname stars. Yet the studio still buried equilibrium >> in the near future.

[00:14:46]Freedom.

[00:14:47]>> You can't do this. You cannot do this.

[00:14:49]>> There's nothing we can't do.

[00:14:51]>> Is a thing of the past.

[00:14:53]>> Now, one reason I've always suspected is that it looks and feels too much like The Matrix. This came out in 2002, but was likely being filmed and at least in pre-production around the time The Matrix came out. But the true backstory with Equilibrium is that internationally the studio had already secured the money it needed to pay for the movie and they were skittish again to release it in US theaters. they felt like it didn't quite make sense and also the comparisons to The Matrix were going to be a little too close and they essentially decided to not market this movie to American audiences again cuz they were already going to make their nut back uh internationally. It's the only movie on this list where this is the case and it's a shame this ended up being kind of a straight to video release here in the US that again got discovered over time and snowballed because it punches well above its weight. But if you've never seen it, it takes place in a dystopian future where like all emotion has been suppressed with a drug. Sounds kind of familiar today. But they've also suppressed emotions by like getting rid of like all books, art, poetry, all that stuff has been banned and everyone's essentially been like leveled out to this like baseline. It's really strange, but Christian Bale plays an enforcer. If you break the rules, he comes in and cleans house. The movie features gun fu kind of like John Wick. All kinds of fantastic kinetic action in this movie.

[00:16:19]It's such a shame this didn't get released properly. I mean, audiences were thirsty for a Matrix sequel at that point in 2002. I think this movie would have killed if they released it right.

[00:16:31]And then my number two pick on this list is another one nearly ruined by Harvey Weinstein. You see, he wanted to cut up Snowpiercer. There's chaos.

[00:16:43]Thousand people in an iron box.

[00:16:47]18 years I've hated a train.

[00:16:51]18 years I've waited for this moment.

[00:16:53]>> Or at least he wanted to cut it up for American audiences. He felt like it needed to have a lot of the story trimmed out to make it a faster, leaner action movie. No doubt that would have performed well in theaters here. like he's not wrong, but he would have butchered what is now a classic film that has gone on to stand the test of time and has even spawned a TV series.

[00:17:16]And this is from director Bong Jun Ho, who had already had success with The Host and would later have massive success with Parasite. But he was an established filmmaker at the time that he made Snowpiercer. And essentially, he did not compromise. He would not let Harvey Weinstein cut things out. From what I understand, he even had excuses for why certain things were in the film.

[00:17:36]There's a fish gutting scene Weinstein wanted out of the movie cuz it was gross. Bong Jun Ho told him it was a tribute to his father who was a fisherman which was total BS. So the guy did not compromise. His film stayed the way he wanted it to be and as a result he was punished and his movie did not get a theatrical release in the US. It got in a few theaters but did not get a wide release at all only to then later come around and be well respected and loved by American audiences. And then my number one pick, another one, another movie Harvey Weinstein literally tried to stop American audiences from seeing despite the fact that two years prior it was the number one movie in China. and Hero went on to be the only Chinese language movie to top the American box office. Quite literally the first and is still the only movie to do that. The only other movie to come close is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which did make a lot more money, but it was never number one at the box office. Hero was number one two weekends in a row. And that was partially because Quinton Tarantino lended his name to the movie.

[00:18:45]It was actually advertised as Quinton Tarantino Presents Hero. Now, the backstory with this, like I said, it was already a massive movie in China. It was a hit movie, not just there, but it was a hit movie internationally. Such a big hit internationally, that there was a small contingent of people clamoring for the movie here in the US. In fact, they were starting to buy bootleg DVDs.

[00:19:09]Miramax had to jump in and like give a cease and desist. It was a whole thing of people trying to see this movie before it got its release. There were enough people like Quinton Tarantino and some other producers that backed it, got it pushed through and released 2 years late. Amazing that it went on to have such success. And it's because it's a beautiful movie. It's not just because Quinton Tarantino put his name on it.

[00:19:35]It's an incredible story that is just beautifully told with these different color palettes in each chapter. There are quite a few movies like it, you know, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This director went on to do The House of Flying Daggers, another movie I really like and strongly recommend. None of them are as good and as rock solid and as beautiful and is just perfectly done as Hero. It's amazing they tried to stop us from seeing this movie. It's even more amazing. were able to see it today. Easily the best movie on this list. Hopefully, you found something good to watch. But here's that recap I told you about along with all the streaming services currently hosting these movies. But keep in mind, availability can change from month to month. So, if you don't have access to one of these now, you might in the near future. Or go use NordVPN. Don't forget that link is down in the video description. or just go to nordvpn.com/flickconnection to take advantage of that massive discount. But I'm going to keep making these videos as long as y'all keep watching them. Thanks for watching this episode and you will see me on the next