Every King Kong Movie That Was Never Made

from his 1933 debut to his involvement in the current monsterverse franchise King Kong has been a cultural icon in the sights of monster movie fans for over 90 years as a result the famous oversized gorilla would be featured in several films over the decades along with spawning TV shows Comics video games and even a novelization of its original story unfortunately for Kong however there were a lot more projects that were to involve the large ape that are either lost or were never made in the first place in fact there seems to be a lot more of these ideas that never came to fruition than there are movies that actually ended up being made and a lot of them hold some interesting elements to Kong that we've never seen before and likely never will given the different reasons for why these movies were never made but luckily they've been documented enough for us to be able to talk about and that's what I want to do today I do want to make note that a lot of this video's information and admittedly inspiration came from a book titled Kong unmade the Lost films of Skull Island by John lame this book is such a cool in-depth and well researched look at all of the lost and or unmade King Kong movies from over the years I honestly didn't know the extent of just how many of these examples there were until I read this book full disclosure though if I'm correct there is a second addition to this book with updated info that I had no idea existed before making this video so for today I'm just working with what I have and if I get anything wrong as always let me know in the comments down below obviously for the sake of brevity I'm not going to include every little bit of detail on these movies but if you want to know more about them along with other tidbits and information regarding Kong's upbringing other eight movies that were inspired or intended to rip off Kong and everything else in between I highly recommend buying this book and reading it yourself for today however I just want to focus on the ones that weren't made but before we get into the video there's a couple of things I'd like to to talk about real quick first off Happy New Year's late New Year's by the time this video comes out but a new year nonetheless 2023 was such a great and important year for the channel and I'm so incredibly grateful for the growth and support it's gained in this last year I genuinely love making these kinds of long form videos and I plan to keep doing that this year especially since I've got a lot of exciting stuff planned for 2024 with all that said this brings me to the next thing I'd like to announce I'm now on patreon that's right boys they've got me too No One Is Safe I've officially sold out all jokes aside I've been considering patreon for a while now because YouTube is you know YouTube and generally it's just better and more safe to have multiple sources of income when it comes to being a content creator that being said this is completely optional it's not going to take away from the content at all if anything it should help make the content better because that means I can pour more money into these videos especially in regards to the research as there are tons of resources resources that I need in order to make these videos as in-depth as they are my patreon page is very simple it's one tier $3 a month for $3 you get a pretty standard list of perks including a name mention and thank you at the end of every video and exclusive posts and updates on future projects however the thing I'm most excited about for this page are the commentary videos If you guys subscribe to my patreon you get access to an exclusive Commentary series that I'm working on with my good friend Gambit where we watch dinosaur movies while talking [ __ ] making fun of each other and overall just being dumb little goofballs we've recorded a few of these already and they have been very fun and hilarious I promise you it's not just an hour and a half of us sitting in silent watching a movie We're actively talking and we're having a lot of fun through it the goal is to get one or two of these commentary videos out each month but if you go check out the patreon right now you'll see that we have two up already one on the critically acclaimed velocipastor and another on you know Disney's dinosaur which is is an okay movie I guess it's no velocipastor these were a lot of fun to make we have more of them coming and if you want to see them check out the link in the description below that will take you straight to my patreon page all right I think that pretty much covers everything with all of that out of the way let's get into the video creation believe it or not King Kong was partly conceived by a movie that one had nothing to do with him and two was never fully made in the first place this movie is called creation and it was initially proposed to RKO in 1929 by film director Harry O Hoy who's directed several films from the early to mid 1900s one of which most of you are likely familiar with being 1925's the Lost World this is where creation would get a lot of its influence hoit basically wanted to take the overall idea of the lost world and make something new and modern out of it the idea was to make the story pretty similar with an expedition of people venturing to a lost world type of location that how osed plenty of prehistoric animals including dinosaurs theasaurus and ancient mammals except of course instead of taking place on a plateau in the Amazon rainforest like the Lost World creation would take place on an island with all of these primordial threats that would be created by none other than special effects animator Willis O'Brien according to L's book Hoy approached the movie production Studio RKO pictures and Pitch them the idea for creation while using prints of his Lost World movie as a reference along with telling them that he not only plans to have O'Brien on board for the project but that he's also going to get his money's worth out of him because Hoy would tell RKO that he thought O'Brien could make a total of 37 dinosaurs for their movie in the span of only 8 weeks 17 of which were to be primary dinosaurs and the rest of the 20 were to be background the project seemed very ambitious but RKO was willing to take a chance on it so they gave the go-ahead for the movie's development and even gave hoit and O'Brien a $1.2 million budget to work with with that a story line was created by screenwriter bua Marie dicks and hoit himself what resulted was a story that focused on a group of people on a yacht trip this group includes the wealthy Armitage family who owned the yacht which consisted of the father thoron Armitage his adult daughter Elaine Armitage and his younger son Billy Armitage with them is Elaine's fiance Ned Hallet their Aunt Louise their cook Benny and finally Steve the higher tutor for Billy who's taken a liking to Elaine and as a result he's in this love triangle between himself Elaine and her fiance Ned while out at Sea on the yacht an imminent storm cuts the trip short and threatens the lives of the crew before a submarine sent by the Chilean Navy emerges from the waters and saves our characters but the problems don't end there as a literal Island also surfaces from the water the storm forces the submarine towards the island causing it to crash crash against some rocks that open up the hole and flooding it with water they eventually surface the damaged sub in a lagoon and begin exploring the island where they encounter all sorts of immediate threats this includes an Arsen etherium in a scene that would later be reused in 1933's King Kong where as the group attempts to cross a gorge on a large log they encounter and are attacked by the large and hostile rhino likee animal causing many of them to fall to their deaths or get impaled by its large horns there's another counter where Steve runs into and is almost killed by a woolly mammoth there's another sequence where after an undisclosed amount of time on the island the group is at their campsite before they are attacked by a brontosaur after Ned angers it from trying to shoot it eventually the brontosaur is driven away and Ned who I guess is the closest thing to this story's villain is chastised by the group for doing something stupid and endangering everyone pissed off Ned goes off with the gun and encounters a baby triceratops and what do you do when you see a baby dinosaur while being angry at the fact that you had just been reprimanded for doing something stupid that's right you shoot it in the eye so fun fact about this sequence while the movie itself was never shot some test footage was recorded to show RKO what the dinosaurs looked like in action along with showing them what they looked like in the same frame as live animals and humans only about 5 minutes of this test footage exists today from this movie and it features a baby Triceratops wandering too far from its mother at the same time pissed off Ned played by Ralph heral runs into the baby and shoots it right in the eye which we're able to view from the scope of his rifle he walks up to the now dead baby Triceratops which seems to be a life-size mockup of the stop motion model what follows is an understandably angry mother Triceratops chasing Ned right before cutting off however in writing the scene continues with Ned getting impaled by the mother it's implied the scene of Ned getting impaled was also recorded but is now lost going going back to the rest of the story Steve and the rest of the group eventually make their way to some ancient ruins that holds treasure and more prehistoric animals a pterodactyl almost kidnaps Elaine and is stopped by Steve while the rest of the crew is chased by a Stegosaurus they eventually run into a temple that houses a Tyrannosaur mother and her young and feeling threatened at the presence of another dinosaur the Tyrannosaur fights off the stegosaurus in a battle that as cool as it sounds would hold no candle to the one that we saw in Mark palonia movie movie sorians now that is a masterpiece if I've ever seen one before all while this is happening the island also has an active volcano that's due to erupt about around this point in the outline just when our characters have given up hope and Steve and Elaine confess their love for each other the group is spotted by a plane in the sky and are promptly saved from the island the film would end on an epilog that features a pterodactyl that managed to escape the island and ends up falling from exhaustion onto the rescue boat that our characters are now on and that was supposed to be creation as fun and exciting as this movie sounds it unfortunately was never made at least not completely the movie did get decently far into production with O'Brien apparently completing several of the creature models including an assortment of dinosaurs a couple of theasaurus and the Arsen orium some sets were also designed and built and along with that the test footage was also shot of Ned and the Triceratops but that wasn't the only footage that was shot in fact there was about 20 minutes of total shot footage some of which may have been reused for other RKO projects though it's not completely certain and others that are still completely lost there was also footage of the Shipwreck the submarine the island emerging from the ocean and various shots of the animals which were hard to maintain on set the test footage would end up being a rather large expense for RKO costing around $131,000 from here things be began to slow down for production deadlines weren't being met promises weren't being kept and before you knew it po was trying to scale back the movie story in an attempt to keep the project from getting cancelled even going as far as to cut out certain scenes that maybe took a little too much time effort and money to make and instead replace them with more straightforward scenes like for example instead of a yacht approaching a deadly storm it would be a plane crash on the island instead of many people getting killed off by many animals it would just be Ned killed off by one of the dinosaurs despite this the movie would ultimately be cancelled by filmmaker Marian C Cooper who saw a flaw in creation it didn't have a central antagonist Cooper who had his own movie idea in the plannings saw the potential behind creation and intended to use its elements for his own movie for him to cancel the movie some might say this was a [ __ ] up move from Cooper especially since he's described creation as and I quote just a lot of an animals walking around but honestly it seemed that Cooper was onto something with his whole Central antagonist thing because he would take several elements of creation including a lot of the material made for it and use it in his own film which was to be 1933's King Kong 1933's King Kong original story the origins of 1933's King Kong was actually a culmination of many things yes of the ideas and elements of creation were reused for the film but it's not what necessarily conceived the entire idea of King Kong the conception came from Maran C Cooper's fascination with Wildlife mainly with that of Apes which he had since he was younger that interest seemed to follow him in his film making career as he would become inspired to make a documentary on gorillas after witnessing a family of baboons during the filming of another movie he directed called The Four Feathers but the idea for the movie came in other places as well Cooper also had a fascination with kodo Dragons after reading a book titled the dragon lizards of Komodo written by William Douglas burden in 1927 the book details the expedition that buron and his wife took to the islands of the Dutch East Indies in the hopes of searching for the giant almost dinosaur-like lizards themselves which they would eventually encounter they would then take these specimens back to New York City with them where they would be put on display some as live specimens and others being killed and harvested see the connections yet with his interest in these two great animals Cooper couldn't help but think what a scenario would look like if the two beasts were pitted against each other and this was kind of the first iteration of King Kong even though it technically wasn't King Kong quite yet the idea was to document both animals in their natural habitats before eventually pitting them against each other which wasn't supposed to be an actual recorded fight between the two animals instead the footage would be spliced with other footage of people in animal suits fighting each other but there were many aspects of both burden story and other areas of inspiration that would cause Cooper to want to incorporate things in his film that would turn it less of a documentary and more of a Sci-Fi Adventure apparently the idea of a woman being abducted by King Kong came from a real life event in which a woman was taken by a gorilla that displayed some level of attraction to her her which was recorded in a book titled Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa in the first true iteration of King Kong the basic story outline featured a group of people that travel to a tropical island and run into a gorilla which was initially going to be a real gorilla there would be a sequence of the AP fighting off prehistoric lizards that would be played by actual kodo dragons before eventually kidnapping the female of the group soon the gorilla is captured by the rest of the men and is taken to New York City where he somehow gets loose and is killed and I think at this point the ape is supposed to be regular Siz but I don't know for sure but as time went on the idea went through many different changes mainly in the form of how the animal scenes were going to be created when Cooper was eventually hired by RKO to help produce the most dangerous game likely to get his foot in the door with the company which would likely get him a step closer to making his movie which by the way wasn't going by King Kong yet at least not that I know after his work on the most dangerous game Cooper eventually ran into a production at RKO that really sparked his attention this was the movie creation and when he saw that things weren't looking too great for it he would make the move to suggest his gorilla movie instead and as a result creation would be cancelled after creation was cancelled Cooper now had an arsenal of dinosaur props and materials at his side that if I were to guess RKO likely suggested for him to use so that they didn't didn't go to waste money time and effort were put into these models and it would have been an absolute waste to not use them so Cooper decided to use the dinosaur models instead of live kodo dragons and considering a lot of these models were large siiz dinosaurs some of which Cooper's Guerilla was to fight during the movie I think this was around the time they decided to increase Kong's overall size along with that an official title was also given to the movie it went under a couple of different names some of which possibly being throwaways until a more suitable name came along but they included giant Terror gorilla and the Beast before eventually being given the title of King Kong a script for the movie was written and it would be about a big game hunter by the name of Danby denim who's looking to hunt something different but Grand to put on display in America when he hears the story of a mysterious sea serpent off the coast of vapor Island he has the ship's Captain Captain englehorn set sail in that direction meanwhile the script also focuses on a group of prisoners and a single woman on a Lifeboat out in the middle of the ocean the prison transport ship that they were initially on had sunk for unknown reasons and I assume the woman with them whose name is Shirley was a worker on that ship the group eventually makes it to Vapor Island where they are immediately attacked by a brontosaurus which is described to be the sea serpent that was mentioned earlier things aren't much better when they get to land as the group are attacked by various different animals and including a terrasaur a triceratops and a therapod of some kind other encounters include giant snakes there's a piece of concept art that shows one of the crew members running into a giant carnivorous plant and eventually they'd also meet Kong himself Shirley first meets him after one of the convicts attempts to have his way with her before she is saved by the large gorilla who I assume killed the convict this is where Kong kidnaps Shirley and when the rest of the group attempt to save her it ends poorly for many of them because they follow him over a log bridge that Kong manages to knock down into the pit below with all of the men on it in the pit they run into even more terrifying creatures some of them being octopus tentacles and giant crabs shortly after there's a dinosaur battle sequence with Kong and some thod dinosaur that's not named and after the battle is won Kong takes Shirley up to his rock layer in the mountains where a couple of the survivors from the pit followed to continue their attempt to rescue her one of these men named John had fallen in love with Shirley and even after some scenes of Shirley and Kong bonding she goes off with Jon which angers Kong and soon the two are being pursued by him they eventually make their way to the beach where they finally run into denim who uses a tri chloride bomb to knock the giant ape out and take him back to New York City to make millions off of him during a show in Madison Square Garden Shirley is pushed into a Tiger cage by a jealous performer and her screams alert Kong causing him to break out save shirely and carry her in his mouth as he makes his way up the Empire State Building during a storm police follow after him in the building with machine guns and shoot at him before Kong is struck by lightning causing him to fall to his death he holds Shirley one last time before he eventually dies of course this idea didn't stick and a lot of changes were made but this was the first version of the script that had been written out and many of the ideas were still used including the log scene Kong fighting a therapod dinosaur and taking Shirley up to his Rock Lair and his eventual capture and sequence in New York City But ultimately there were a lot of changes made in between that would make King Kong the classic that we know today speaking of which considering we're on the topic of 1933's King Kong and this is a video talking a lot on Lost King Kong content I'd be remiss to not at least mention the notorious spider pit scene in the Final Cut of 1933's King Kong there was a scene in the movie that was allegedly cut out and hasn't seen the light of day since its initial screening in theaters or was it before we get into that I'll explain the scene more specifically this is the log scene and the scene depicts the sailors being shaken off the log by Kong himself and they end up falling into a pit containing all sorts of nightmarish creatures giant spiders insects worms and two-legged lizards begin to attack the survivors of the Fall a scene that reportedly made people in theaters so scared some actually fainted from watching it at least that's how the story goes many people seem to throw around the idea that the reason why the scene was cut was because of how terrifying it was for audiences at the time to see all of this death from such gruesome ugly creatures in this updated style of stop motion made it seem too real and just too much for them however according to L's book Cooper himself apparently said at one point the reason why the scene was cut was because it stopped the movie story while some seem to interpret this differently it's likely Cooper was talking about the movie's pacing and that the scene may have slowed it down too much for his liking so it was cut or at least that's what people say in a more recent account of this story namely from Ray Morton from a 2021 interview with the Kaiju Transmissions podcast he States the scene was Never filmed and that there was no spider pit sequence at all for those of you that don't know Morton is an author that actually wrote his own history book on King Kong back in 2005 in the interview he explains his stance further can I debunk the other one yeah the one the one that drives me crazy what's that the spider pit sequence um Never filmed that's it and of it was never filmed there is no lost spider spit sequence and that's that so um okay well see that's that's a little bit of a um that is a little bit of a curveball because MH there's that uh there's that note from Cooper that said that he screened it for like an executive or something and that it stopped the movie yes so Cooper made up a lot of stuff okay okay well okay of course that wasn't the only argument he made he goes on to state that there were multiple scenes aside from the spider pit sequence that were never filmed this includes a tarpit scene that features a Triceratops mother and her young likely the ones from creation where it would feature King Kong running into this family of Triceratops stuck in a tarpit there was another scene of Kong in New York City jumping from rooftop to Rooftop that was also cut then of course we have the spider pit sequence according to Morton the reason why these scenes are lost are because they were never filmed in the first place yeah so I'm going to give you the room to kind of unpack what the deal is with the spider pit spider pit sequence well here's the thing you always hear about the Lost spider pit sequence how come you never hear about the Lost rooftop jump sequence or the Lost Triceratops in the tarpit sequence um and the reason you don't hear about them is like the spider sequence they were never filmed uh the original script of Kong and it's in it's in the screen plays um you know you can if you look up the original writing there was there's a sequence when Kong is going through the the jungle where he encounters a mother triceratops and her two babies and one or more of them is stuck in the tarpit and I he goes to get them or some and they end up had him fight okay I know there's a big fight around at tar pit and then um then there is the spider pit sequence and then there is the what the original escape from the theater in New York in the current film he knocks down the Third Avenue L the subway um in the original cut of the film that was a last minute film sequence uh Kong was supposed to go up on the roof of the hotel and where um where uh Jack and Carl denim come out and they're like we gotta you know get the spotlights we got to chase them there was a whole sequence where Kong jumped from building to building tracked by uh flood lights by police flood lights and that's how he made his way to the Empire State Building so those were three sequences that were in the original script there are um some uh production illustrations because they were planning through the scenes and most of the sets were built for it and there were test sequences but the thing about King Kong is what what people don't one of the weird things people say about oh is this be movie it's like Kong was not a be movie Kong was a really expensive film it cost at the time double like like what an a picture was in those days a big budget Studio spectacular it cost twice what the average um spectacular was and and it had budgetary issues and and basically they were told you have to cut back on some of the sequences because this movie is just costing way too much and Cooper made a decision he cut the tar pit sequence he cut the spider pit sequence and he cut the jumping from rooftop sequence the quote you always hear from Cooper is he said well it's it stopped the story dead and he's right it did stop the story dead because it would have been a five minute sequence that um involved not Kong it would have involved all these other character but it wouldn't have involved Kong and from a pacing point of view I understand why they cut it okay like because it would have slowed the movie down but the reason that I know it was never filmed is really simple if you look at the production reports it was never on the schedule all the scenes in the movie that are in the film are on the production schedule and I'm talking both about the animation production schedule and the live action shooting because there was a live action portion and there was a um there was uh a miniature unit they never filmed it it's not in any of the production reports and if you look at the at the production screenplay those three sequences are all exed out in the production screenplay um because they knew they weren't going to film them so where did those photos come from the the photos were test they had built the sets and they built the sets for all three sequences and even the the um the jumping from rooftop to Rooftop sequence the buildings were we photographed those are the background buildings when Jack and denim come up on the roof so they repurposed some of that um but um so the sets were all built and they shot tests for everything like they were they were going along making the movie they were intended to shoot it but it got to a point where it's like we can't afford to do these sequences you'll basically cut the ones you don't think are necessary there's definitely more that he had to say about this scene but for the sake of brevity I'll leave it here if you want to know more about it I highly recommend listening to the entire episode of the podcast it's actually a really great listen according to L's book if the Lost spider pit sequence was ever part of filming it was only shown once at a test screening in San Bernardino California of course given Morton's account is true that's a huge if and he even states that maybe brief test footage was shot but considering it was just test footage it likely would have been burned or disposed of before being put in the actual film over the years there have been many guesses and rumors as to what may have happened to the spider pit scene given of course it actually exists some think it had been destroyed and will never be shown again others think that certain parts of the props from it were reused in other O'Brien works like the spider from from 1957's the black scorpion though there doesn't seem to be any evidence that backs this up but what do you guys think King Kong made in Japan in October of 1933 Japan released a silent short film called King Kong made in Japan which was meant to be played before the actual King Kong movie in Japanese theaters the film was officially approved by RKO and development was made under the Japanese Media Company soiu who also dubbed the original King Kong movie for Japanese audiences the movie features a pair of homeless men Santa and koi wanting to strike it rich so that he has his girlfriend's father's approval to be with her Santa attempts to create his own King Kong show after he sees the American version becoming so successful in Japan he Don a gorilla suit and makes a deal with a Vaudeville theater to create a King Kong showing which ends up being an instant success but not before omitsu Santa's girlfriend or at this point ex-girlfriend had moved on to her new boyfriend which was likely set up by her father during one of his performances Santa notices omitsu and her new boyfriend in the audience and he becomes so angry at the sight of this he jumps off the stage and chases her boyfriend out of the theater and into the streets all while he still has the gorilla suit on this leads to what I assume is meant to be a series of comedic Antics where people think he's an actual animal on the loose and the authorities are soon after him but Santa is able to catch up to omitsu boyfriend knocks him out and puts the ape suit on him before the authorities show up when he heads back to the theater Santa is told that the showrunners have offered him more money to keep performing as King Kong and so with his new job and fame he's finally able to marry omitsu seems like a funny little short but unfortunately it's now considered lost what might have happened to it it's not really known maybe a fire maybe the film material decayed or maybe it was one of the many victims to the Hiroshima bombing in World War II The New Adventures of King Kong after the success of King Kong a sequel was unsurprisingly made for it which was called son of Kong after that movie another film was planned to continue the King Kong Saga but it wasn't going to be a traditional sequel instead this movie was meant to be set during the events of King Kong's Voyage from Skull Island land to New York City the idea was that the ship that Kong was being carried on called The Venture was forced to stop at the Malay archipeligo after sustaining some damage on their way to New York City when the crew are attacked by some unnamed creatures on the island they're forced to set Kong free to fight them off once he does Kong runs into the jungle with the men in pursuit to recapture him leading to a whole new adventure the film was never realized due to a lack of interest from RKO apparently son of Kong had mixed reception and simply did not have the same Fanfare as the original King Kong movie so there wasn't a whole lot of confidence for a third movie The Lost Island the Lost Island was going to be a short King Kong musical parody from 1934 made by Christy studio and was to feature marionette puppets on strings and people in Monster suits considering King Kong's instant success it's really no surprise that there were people who wanted to make their own own versions of it in this case in the form of a spoof while not much is known about the short itself there are a few still images Left Behind from its production featuring the puppets and King Kong himself who was going to be played by Charles Gamora who's had a pretty fruitful career starring in movies in a gorilla suit there's one still of one of the characters encountering the dinosaur or dragon in a cave there's another of an tied to a stone pedestal with Kong behind her another of Kong fighting the the dinosaur or dragon in the background with the characters in The foreground probably singing their musical numbers and finally one of Kong sitting on the dinosaur the project was only going to be one real which if I'm correct would have only been about 11 minutes despite the short time frame the project was never realized due to budget constraints According to some accounts however the project was going to be shot in Technicolor which hadn't been done before for short films so had it been made it would have set the record for being first short film to use Technicolor Tarzan versus King Kong so back when he was first developing his story for King Kong before it was even called King Kong and it was just known as his Ape movie Cooper had also attempted to get the rights to Tarzan as well at the time I think Cooper's plan was to make two separate movies in which he could use African Wildlife footage for both his initial plans to obtain the rights to Tarzan would fall through but but the idea to try again would return a couple of years later after he was hired as the vice president of a smaller and newly formed film company called Pioneer pictures when trying to figure out new movie ideas Tarzan versus King Kong was suggested to Cooper who attempted to contact MGM about getting the rights to Tarzan but was yet again denied on top of that there was also the problem of who owned the rights of King Kong which is going to be a recurring issue as we continue this list at the time Cooper thought he had the rights to King Kong but RKO was claiming that they owned the rights to him so even if Cooper wanted to make a sequel to King Kong it was going to be tough because RKO wasn't going to just let him make a movie without giving him a problem unfortunately as far as a movie goes this seems to have been the extent of Tarzan versus King Kong though a comic was made of it much later in 2016 King Kong appears in Edo so whether this movie can really be seen as a King Kong film or not is debatable that being said it's clear Kong had some influence to it at least enough to put his name in the movie's title rk's King Kong was such a huge hit that it would be re-released to theaters several times most of which would also be huge successes some say King Kong appears in Edo was made by a small Japanese movie company as a way to capitalize off of King Kong's 1938 re-release but it's hard to say considering the is also a lost movie only a few Stills and the movie's cover exist today and there's not a whole lot of information about it out there but luckily we have the film synopsis the story is about a wealthy and corrupt man named hu Toba whose daughter is kidnapped causing him to announce a cash reward for her safe return turns out one of toba's workers Magoo plannned out the kidnapping as a form of Revenge towards his boss for making him do nefarious things against his will instead of King Kong actually appearing in some form in this movie Magoo's father has a trained pet ape simply named King Kong which Magoo forced to kidnap toba's daughter while it's not entirely clear how the events pan out we do know that Magoo was able to make off with the reward money for finding toba's daughter Toba would be killed by King Kong and Kong himself would be wounded by toba's men leading to his eventual death Abbott and Costello meet King Kong Bud Abbott and L Costello were a comedy duo from around the mid 1900s and together the two worked on all sorts of media projects from Radio to movies at one point the duo were going to have themselves an adventure on Skull Island that never came to fruition but some of the idea was apparently used for an early draft of a movie that did get released that also featured the comedic Duo which was called Abbott and Costello Meet Captain kid while the finished product does feature an island called Skull Island it's a simple one with no monsters on it however according to L's book an early draft revealed that Skull Island used to look a lot different in this movie in that early draft Abbott and Costello joined Captain kid's Voyage to Skull Island in search of treasure upon arrival the crew is greeted by natives that take one of the female Sailors and uses her as a sacrifice to King Kong who takes her and heads back into the jungle the rest of the crew follow after him running into dragon and giant reptiles and insects before eventually catching up to Kong where it's revealed that Skull Island actually houses a whole family of Kongs they eventually save the female sailor after they wait for the Apes to fall asleep but before long Kong is after them forcing them to escape from the island through a secret passageway that houses a giant spider despite this obstacle they're able to make it back to the beach with a little bit of the treasure that they were able to find during their adventure and they escape but not before Captain kid tries to B betray them luckily he's left behind on the island and the crew continue on their way finishing the movie off of Skull Island initially the movie was going to be two separate projects one about just Captain kid and the other being the Abbott and Costello Meet King Kong movie from earlier somewhere down the line the two projects were molded into one before eventually they ditched the King Kong element entirely it's not exactly known why it wasn't made but lame guesses a rights issue likely killed the project The Eighth Wonder The Eighth Wonder is an attempt from Cooper to remake King Kong in the 50s though no one seems to truly know whether this film was really going to be a remake as some sources suggested that it was going to take place during King Kong's Voyage from Skull Island to New York City essentially being another attempt at The Adventures of King Kong movie that was originally meant to be a third movie to the original 1933 version there was likely still a lot of legal issues with who owned King Kong's name that prevented Cooper from continuing the project but he seemed pretty adamant on a new Kong movie and the factor that killed the project was the death of a colleague that was working on a new camera method for a movie company that Cooper was working for at the time called cinama according to this excerpt in L's book at the time the process for cinama utilized three cameras placed side by side which shot in perfect synchronization so that the film could be then projected by three projectors on three screens in a 80° configuration unfortunately the process was never finished and thus the movie never went forward King Kong versus Frankenstein in one of the most infamous cases of an unrealized King Kong reboot King Kong versus Frankenstein was conceived by Willis O'Brien who was not only heavily associated with King Kong but was also a fan of Mary Shell's Frankenstein book which in turn made him want to make his own adaptation of it in a way this project could have given given him that chance so in 1958 O'Brien began to plan out his King Kong Frankenstein film the movie would have also served as a sort of sequel to the original King Kong as it was set to take place after the events of that movie where it's revealed that King Kong had not died after falling from the Empire State Building but rather he was in a com State because of it this movie would have also featured Carl denim who would have taken this opportunity to take Kong back to his rightful home Skull Island then the movie would transition to the actual time it's taking place in 30 years later denim ends up going back to Skull Island after all of these years and captures Kong again for some reason it's never stated why but this was early on in the story's development phase so this was likely a detail that would have been more fleshed out had it been fully made meanwhile Frankenstein's grandson is raising the dead after his new science experiment becomes an absolute success because he's able to create a giant monstrosity out of dead animal material from here you can probably tell what happens both Kong and Frankenstein's monster eventually escaped from the shackles of their captors and take their fight to the Streets of San Francisco that was at least the first draft of the movie in the second draft it went by a different title King Kong versus the Ginko due to the fact that there was some concern regarding the legality of using Frankenstein in their movie since it was thought at the time Universal owned the rights to the character in this one it's explained that denim wants Kong to be p against what would have been the Frankenstein monster in a stage fight as a way to profit off the two creatures Geno's story in this draft is that it originated in a lab in Africa but killed its creator and managed to escape only to be captured and brought to fight Kong Kong as you'd likely already guess was captured from Skull Island in a sequence that I can only assume was maybe leading up to the stage fight it features the monster holding on to a tight RPP above its head with a girl walking over it before it eventually breaks gko catches the girl and Kong who I'm assuming sees this as faint memories from his time during the first film instinctively goes on the attack by breaking out of his cage and going after the monster the fight is taken into the Streets of San Francisco and eventually up the Golden Gate Bridge before the two fall into the water ending the battle and the movie when O'Brien pitched the idea to RKO president he was directed to movie producer John Beck who would take O'Brien's script and hire script writer to make some changes in this new draft it went by a new title called King Kong versus Prometheus and it would have featured a doctor named Kurt descendant of Victor Frankenstein who would create and is able to remote control the monster before it's revealed that he was never able to who only pretended to be controlled by Kurt who by the way is revealed to not be a descendant to Frankenstein and the monster gets to jump on him after the monster kills Kurt his battle with Kong begins after finding out that O'Brien actually didn't have the rights to King Kong and instead it was RKO that did Beck would then take the script to multiple Studios within the states all of which declined turning it into a movie Beck would then take the script to International territories and eventually found himself in Japan knocking on too's doors asking if they were interested in it he did this without telling O'Brien and too decided to go for the project forked over $220,000 for the rights of Kong which allowed them to use him for the next 5 years and threw out O'Brien's script to make their own because with Kong at their disposal a famous American movie monster they could easily ped against their own famous movie monster and make more profit doing that so they replace Frankenstein with Godzilla and King Kong versus Godzilla was born it wasn't until O'Brien read about the news from the papers where he would finally find out about this deal made behind his back and on top of this he wasn't going to be able to work on the film like he hoped to and since Japan was used to suitmation over stop motion that's how they were going to bring Kong to life much to O'Brien's dismay when Cooper found out about this he wanted to sue RKO for making that deal because he thought he owned Kong but at this point things were still pretty murky with that in the end King Kong versus Godzilla was made in 1962 the same year O'Brien would unfortunately pass away and to top it all off King Kong versus Godzilla would end up being one of tojo's most well-performing Godzilla films damn O'Brien always got the short end of the stick when it came to these projects it sucks that his King Kong versus Frankenstein film never came to fruition baboon a tale about a Yeti okay so in case you couldn't tell by now some of these examples aren't going to be 100% King Kong movies in fact while some could argue King Kong played a role in terms of inspiration for this one baboon a tale about a Yeti is one of the examples that takes a pretty large departure from King Kong movies as a whole as it's not even focused on a giant gorilla but rather the discovery of the Abominable Snowman the story was created by O'Brien and like a lot of his previous ideas it was never realized initially obrien wanted the idea to be a part of a project of his that went by the name triple assignment it was a film that told three different stories within it with each one focusing on a different reporter working on a Fantastical or Supernatural assignment for the same magazine which would have been called independent observe that would connect all three stories each of the three stories would take place in different parts of the world one would be in India and focus on a shrinking elephant and another would take place in Baja California to focus on living flesh eating plasma the other story was to take place in the Himalayas and focus on a reporter who would cover a story about a scientist who was able to tame a Yeti when O'Brien's idea fell through he would take that Yeti story and flush it out into a a full story for a possible film The Story would have focused on a female scientist named Maran Town who's looking for her father in the Himalayas after he attempts to find the Abominable Snowman with her is her father's business partner Kent Carr and some Shar Buzz that guide them to their destination along the way they also run into a pair of showmen named Taylor Smith and Fleming Ward who contribute to the Expedition and tag along with the group before they run into a lost city from here it's kind of your run-of-the-mill monster story there's treasure in the lost city at some point the group is attacked by a giant snake and the yeti is revealed and fights off the giant reptile and eventually Marian finds her father who actually befriended the yeti Smith and Ward want to take the yeti back to civilization to profit off of it much to Town's dismay despite this the pair were able to trink the yeti and force our protagonist to go along with their plans they transport the yeti back to civilization by ship but on their way a storm breaks out causing the yeti to escape and wreak havoc on the top deck Town takes a motorboat to lead his Yeti friend off the ship and back to the Himalayas but as he does this he's attacked by a pot of orcas in the outlines climax the yeti is able to save town and fight off the killer whales Smith attempts to retrieve the yeti but is pulled into the sea and is also killed by the orcas killing our main antagonist the outline ends with the yeti succumbing to the injuries dealt by the killer whales and sinks into the bloody ocean as our main characters helplessly watch on the ship that sails back to civilization continuation King Kong versus Godzilla with how successful King Kong versus Godzilla ended up being for Tojo a sequel was naturally planned however as you can already tell it never happened this was continuation King Kong versus Godzilla and while we never got a movie a story outline was written by screenwriter shinichi seawa the movie would revolve around namur who leads a Japanese search party through an African jungle searching for the crash site of a Japanese plane the only Survivor is said to be a baby who is the niece or nephew of his ex-girlfriend mitsuko that's because the baby had been taken care of by King Kong himself who I guess made a home here in the African jungles after his initial fight with Godzilla speaking of Godzilla his body was discovered near the waters where his and Kong's fight ended in the previous movie his body is recovered and his to be displayed at an island resort going back to Kong he gets attacked by a giant scorpion giving namora the perfect opportunity to save the baby and head back to Japan but he's not going to be able to escape Kong that easily since the giant gorilla can easily find their location due to the telepathic bond that he formed with the baby how I'm not entirely sure but this approaching presence concerns the people of Japan and the only way they could think to counter Kong is resurrecting Godzilla to fight him off they managed to wake Godzilla up from his Kom State and their first fight takes place although it's shortlived meaning along with Kong the citizens of Japan now have two monsters to deal with with Kong still going after the baby the military attempt to contain Godzilla namora and mitsuko take the infant and try to get as far away from Kong as possible which eventually takes them to kagoshima where Mount ASO starts to erupt in the final climax of the film Godzilla would show up emerging from the volcano and finally truly battle King Kong the erupting volcano would put our protagonists in danger namely the baby H Kong would save one last time before the movie would end on an ambiguous note Godzilla and Kong are taken over by the eruption but were given no clear indication on a winner of the battle or if they survived at all as far as why the sequel was never made some sources that I've seen say it was because too was instead considering the idea of making a Godzilla versus Frankenstein movie which makes sense considering they were likely inspired by O'Brien's King Kong versus Frankenstein story that they bought off of RKO since they already use Kong why not use Frankenstein too after all he's also a very famous movie monster but Godzilla versus Frankenstein also never came to fruition and instead they focused on making Mothra versus Godzilla but eventually they used the Frankenstein character in Frankenstein versus Baragon operation Robinson cruso King Kong versus e the planning for King Kong versus eah is a bit of a confusing one to me but I'll try to explain it as best as I can and if I get anything wrong let me know in the comments down below but for my understanding the animation production company rank in bass Productions approached RKO for the rights of King Kong so that they can make an animated show about him but along with an animated show they also wanted a tie-in live action film The Animated show was eventually produced but for the film Rank and bass approached to who at this point also had the rights to King Kong for their liveaction movies and asked if Tojo could make them a liveaction King Kong movie too seemed more than willing to do this considering the success of King Kong versus Godzilla and were even looking to make a whole series of movies about King Kong but this ended up falling through due to right's complications with RKO at least that's what it sounds like regardless too was still allowed to at least make that one-off film with King Kong which they already started and finished a lot of pro and materials for however RKO and or Rank and bass weren't happy with the story that too came up with which would have involved King Kong fighting a giant Condor moora and eah who by the way is a giant Lobster Kaiju RKO and Ranken bass backed out of the collaboration with Tojo who simply decided to switch King Kong's place with Godzilla thus creating 1966's Godzilla versus the sea monster Hammer films King k Kong back in the mid-60s the British Film Production Studio Hammer films wanted to remake King Kong and approached RKO for the rights they were denied because at the time RKO was strictly focusing on handing out the rights to Studios that were looking to make sequels or even loose continuations of King Kong they didn't give up though because a few years later in 1970 Hammer films attempted to get a stopmotion remake of King Kong going again this time inviting one of their special effects workers David Allen who had previously worked with the studio on when dinosaurs ruled the Earth Allen would even go as far as to make his own test footage of a colorized version of King Kong on top of the Empire State Building fighting off airplanes however RKO once again refused to give them the rights for a remake but making the footage wasn't a complete waste for Allan because a couple of years later he was able to give it to Volkswagen who used it in one of their commercials fun fact in in that commercial andero is played by Victoria Riskin at least according to IMDb who is the daughter of f Ray who played andero in the original 1933 King Kong space Kong so this is an interesting example made up by Cooper and from my understanding one that wasn't even meant to be planned as a movie at first or really at all so just a little bit of background to explain this one back in 1932 a King Kong novel ization to the 1933 movie would be written by delos W love lace the rights to the movie are separate from the rights to the novelization because the novel was made before the movie and thus based on some weird copyright law at the time it was considered to be the source material and had its own copyrights the rights to the novel were actually never renewed So eventually the book went into public domain but let's focus on the 1960s when gold key Comics wanted to do a King Kong adaptation to the novel and were communicating with Cooper about the story the comic would have featured characters that were descended from the ones from the original story with the lead character being Carl denham's daughter and it would have involved them finding Kong back on Skull Island and discovering the Fountain of Youth but there were a couple of issues that Cooper had with this idea Cooper didn't like that King Kong was found back on Skull Island because it contradicts the events of the original story and he didn't like the fact that the story had a female lead he would Express his concerns through a letter that he would send to his legal adviser Charles Fitz Simmons and through this Cooper introduces a new and intriguing King Kong idea the idea would consist of the lead characters going out to space to discover a small asteroid sized Planet one half of which is where Kong and presumably other prehistoric species of animals inhabit while the other half contains the fountain or as Cooper describes River of Youth Fitz Simmons resp responded to Cooper telling him that he relay his concerns to the comic writers but also told him that his idea for what is essentially a King Kong and Space story was interesting enough to be a movie and even suggests to Cooper to save it in case the opportunity ever came up of course as you can see it never did ABC's King Kong so in case you couldn't tell already when it comes to the history of King Kong and the many attempts to remake it it's very complicated in this particular case this version of King Kong would end up starting a legal battle between two huge movie studios but let's not get ahead of ourselves before I get into the story I do want to point out that some elements of it are alleged and may not be 100% correct because there are many names involved that maybe saw the story differently but according to an article published by the New York Magazine the vice president of ABC Michael Eisner thought about remaking King Kong after watching a rerun of the original on TV he would bring the idea up to the president of MCA Universal Sid shinberg shinberg seemed to be somewhat interested in it and mentioned this idea to his friend the president of Paramount Barry Diller what the original idea of King Kong would have looked like for ABC we'll never know because the moment the idea was told to Associates of these two huge movie studios it was out of eisner's hands Diller of Paramount would get himself a potential director Dino de lenes and shinberg of M CA Universal would get a potential producer from his respective Studio of course these two men didn't know what the other was doing and before they knew it there would be a fight for the rights of King Kong the legend of King Kong the legend of King Kong was Universal's attempt at a King Kong remake back in the 70s and it was a very long and complicated road that I'm going to do my best to summarize this initially started with Jim Danforth wanting to revisit the idea of making a King Kong movie of course he couldn't do that for legal reasons Danforth then did some research and found out the novelization for King Kong was in public domain meanwhile Universal was also wanting to remake King Kong and attempted to get the rights from RKO in comes producer Dino de lenes who was working with Paramount who was also going to make their own King Kong movie de lenes actually knew the owner of rk's parent company and used his connection with that to try and secure a deal with obtaining the rights to remake King Kong from RKO which still had their only sequels rule however Universal was offering an enticing $200,000 offer along with a percentage of net profit but that money offer was matched by de la renes along with offering 3% of the box office earnings RKO was torn on which offer to choose but Universal claimed that people at RKO made a verbal agreement to sell them the rights and when RKO ended up making a deal with Paramount Universal filed a lawsuit against both companies while that was happening Danforth would get hired to work on Universal's King Kong movie which was given the title The Legend of King Kong Danforth would then tell the people at Universal about the legal loophole that they can use instead to make their Kong movie which is what Universal would do instead of trying to get the rights from RKO for a remake they would instead just adapt the novelization however because RKO was still giving them a hard time Danforth would was forced to design original creatures because nothing from the original movie was allowed to be in their adaptation so an outline was created and Danforth created new monsters eventually down the line Paramount and Universal worked out some agreement that allowed for Paramount's Kong movie to come out first and for universals to come out about a year and a half later for the universal movie an outline was written and the beginning sequence is pretty much the same story you've already heard an is a struggling actress she's convinced by filmmaker Carl denim to join him on his voyage with Jack Driscoll and Captain engelhorn turns out denim really wanted to try and find Skull Island which they do they reach land run into the natives and gets kidnapped and offered to Kong and he takes her of course there's some differences here and there about this iteration of the story but this video is long enough without getting into specifics but I know what you guys really want to hear about and that's the differences between the story of Kong and Skull Island well after Kong takes and the rest of the group head into the Uncharted jungles running into prehistoric bugs like dragonflies and giant beetles that are feasting on the corpse of a dead belum the group make it to a lake and make a raft across it where they encounter a duck build dinosaur that attacks them after denim shoots it in an attempt to scare it away this movie would have also featured its own log and spider pit scene had it been made but there isn't much detail on the scene itself then for the King Kong dinosaur battle instead of a Tyrannosaurus Rex for him to fight just like the original Danforth decided to substitute it with three triceratops or rather the fictional tronus dinosaur designed for this movie The Fight would have ended with Kong breaking the tronus Jaws the same way he broke the T-Rex's Jaws in the original movie there would have been a scene shortly after of denim running into the tronus corpse that's then being picked at by Arch opic's later on Jack would walk by the tronus corpse and seize the that giant maggots are feeding on its dead body along with a crab picking at its eyeball Jack eventually finds Kong's Lair and gets an out of there while the giant ape is asleep but they're interrupted by what was originally going to be theasaurus but the creature was later changed to be a teratorn waking Kong up and chasing after the two this leads him to what was initially going to be his battle with the elasmosaurus but was later changed to a centipede in the final scene on the island an and Jack make it back to the boat but denim is adamant on capturing Kong this leads to Kong breaking through the wall destroying the village and killing many of the natives in brutal fashion including throwing them around throwing trees at them there's even one part where he picks up a native puts him in his mouth for a second and then throws him over the wall and in another even more disturbing death Kong Stomps on another native and when he sees that the man had not died he presses his heel onto his body and grinds into him until he's dead eventually Kong is knocked unconscious with chloride grenades and the crew used the large doors from the walls meant to keep Kong out to make a raft to transport the dormant gorilla on from here it's back to the similar story of Kong being taken back to New York City denim showing him off to the public and Kong managing to break out of his chains and escaping there's a scene during the New York segment where Kong Ventures into a construction site and runs into a steam shovel machine which is being manned by the operator who accidentally scares Kong with it and is attacked with Kong killing the man in the process as Kong makes his way to the Empire State Building denim chases after him in a stolen ambulance hoping to capture whatever happens on film somehow denim manages to get into a plane so that he can film Kong at the top of the building but this ends up being a fatal mistake because Kong manages to hit his plane causing denim to fall to his death Kong is shot falls to his death and the movie ends with a police officer stating the planes had gotten him but a reporter at the scene which would have been played by Fay Ray the original andero as a cameo role would disagree with the officer and say the line synonymized with this franchise it wasn't the airplanes it was Beauty killed the Beast as cool as the legend of King Kong sounded by the time the year and a half time frame was finally up everyone who was once part of this production had moved on from it and as a result it was never made Roger corman's King Kong admittedly there's not much on this one but apparently be movie Legend Roger Corman who we've talked about heavily before regarding his carnosaur series was thinking about making his own King Kong remake how invested he was into the idea it's not 100% certain but considering not much is known about it the safest assumption is that it was likely just an idea that Corman was toying around with before eventually shelving it after hearing about the King Kong legal battles happening between Universal and Paramount according to L's book Corman said at one point to the New York Magazine the whole thing is such a farce it will be surprising if anything is made I won't lie though a Corman produced King Kong film would be interesting to see although knowing Corman he probably wouldn't make a King Kong movie he'd probably make more like a an ape movie that is meant to capitalize off of a more popular King Kong film I don't know something of the like baby Kong with 19 76 is King Kong on the horizon it was time for lower budget filmmakers to try and capitalize off of the hype by making their own oversized gorilla movie well in this case it actually wasn't a gorilla it was actually a chimp baby Kong was an idea by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava and his colleague Luigi borgesi who plann to have their movie come out a month before King Kong the movie would have focused on a 12-year-old child named Eric living on an island by the Mediterranean Ocean with his mom who works at a weather station there Eric doesn't have many friends on the island it seems but he does have a chimp friend that he refers to as baby baby is kidnapped by a mad scientist Rupert Alan crab who also lives on the island and wants to use the chimp to test out what I guess is some sort of growth serum because when injected by it the chimp increases in size baby then kills Allen crab after he poses a threat to Eric and himself and is chased off into the jungle by the natives of the island who want to kill the now giant chimp they do this by planting explosives at top a mountain to cause an avalanche to crash right on top of the chimp when detonated the plan is successful but Eric is almost killed in the process in his final Act baby rescues Eric and dies in the Avalanche in the end though the project was cancelled before any huge production could start probably due to the filmmakers losing confidence in the project 1976's King Kong original story after de la Ren's obtained the rights for a King Kong remake from RKO during his battle for it against Universal he got to work with his team in developing the story there's not too much to the original idea that was changed for the final product only that it was to be more faithful to the original film by keeping certain elements like dinosaurs and the Empire State Building scene however for the dinosaur sequences they would be heavily pruned in comparison to the original so that more time was given for Kong and the female lead to connect this resulted in only two dinosaur sequences one that would have attacked our group of characters and the other that would have likely battled against Kong before he was eventually hired by Universal to work on the legend of King Kong Danforth was asked by de la renes to make a stopmotion dinosaur scene but danor turned it down as he wasn't a fan of the movie script in the end dinosaurs would be cut entirely and Kong battles a giant snake instead along with that the movie was made to be modernized instead of the empire ire State Building Kong would climb the twin towers and instead of airplanes he would be shot down by helicopters possible sequels for 1976's King Kong so in this section I figured it would be better to pull all of these movie ideas together since for the most part they were just kind of thrown out there with no real story or development behind them but after King Kong's decent turnout in theaters there were several ideas for a sequel the first of which would be given the title King Kong in Africa apparently this idea came to de la renes even before they finished their first King Kong movie and as a result he rushed to have the story outline made for it there's not a whole lot of information out there about this one but of what is known this possible sequel would have included Kong being brought back to life action sequences with helicopters and submarines and Russian spies how any of that would fit into the story I have no idea another idea that de la renes had was King Kong versus Orca in 1977 de la renes produced a movie called Orca the Killer Whale as a way to capitalize off of Universal's Jaws at the time I guess King Kong versus Orca was his way to entertain the idea of a shared Universe between the two monsters but nothing happened with it I guess eventually de lenes went back to basics with his idea for a King Kong sequel because he thought up another title called King Kong in Moscow before coming up with yet another wild idea this one being called bionic Kong screenwriter Joanna Crawford even suggested a sort of feminist film about King Kong called daughter of King Kong and finally another idea for a sequel was to make it about King Kong's son but as far as these last two ideas go deor renes didn't really like them as he wanted his sequel to be focused on Kong himself so he would revive Kong and what would eventually become known as King Kong Lives King Kong versus Godzilla remake around the mid 80s Japan was working on a new series of Godzilla movies that started with Godzilla 1985 despite its success the follow-up movie 1989's Godzilla versus bolante did not do as well as too had hoped so they were looking to make their next movie a guaranteed Smash Hit considering how successful King Kong versus Godzilla was it was only natural that too considered remaking the movie in the early 9s however back in the the 60s Tojo had spent a lot of money on the rights to use King Kong which would end up cutting back on the budget that they plan to use for the film itself hence why it didn't look the best back in the day considering the amount of money they'd need to purchase the rights to King Kong and the fact that a King Kong versus Godzilla remake was still not a guaranteed success too got cold feet and decided against the idea as a result no official outlin was created though one was submitted by Shinji nishikawa who was a part of too's art department but of course his story never went anywhere the story would have involved a female scientist wanting to turn King Kong into a cyborg maybe to increase his strength to fight Godzilla or for some other possibly nefarious reason I'm not entirely sure but it sounds like an interesting idea Godzilla versus meanong when trying to get the rights for King Kong seemed Bleak Toho tried the next best thing obtaining the rights to mechanic Kong mechanic Kong's debut was in the animated King Kong show by Rank and bass before making its way in liveaction form in King Kong escapes before obtaining any legal rights to use the mechanic Kong monster an outline for the story would be written it features Godzilla fighting a newly created monster gig moth in the United States Godzilla is able to defeat gig moth and somewhere down the line us officials learn that there is what L's book describes as a living nuclear reactor in inside Godzilla the American and Japanese governments work together to take care of the problem with the Americans revealing their newly created mechanic Kong and the Japanese revealing their technology that shrinks objects together a team is shrunk and injected into Godzilla by a needle that mechanic Kong is suited with while the team attempts to take down the living nuclear reactor within Godzilla's body mechanic Kong fights him off on the outside the outline ends with the crew managing to disable the living nuclear reactor and escaping Godzilla's body before a krak in the earth opens up sending both meanong and Godzilla Falling Towards their unknown Fates yet another interesting version of King Kong but unfortunately Toho once again got cold feet due to the uncertainty of the copyright regarding mechanic Kong 2005's King Kong original story in the 1980s after a long legal battle with RKO it was ruled out in court that the rightful owner to King Kong was Maran Cooper but at this point he had already passed away so the rights were handed down to his son Richard Cooper who would sell it to Universal in the 9s when they were looking at a second attempt to make a King Kong remake they'd buy the rights from Cooper's son and offered it to Peter Jackson after they found out he was a big fan of the original movie initially Universal tried to get Jackson to use their script for the legend of King Kong that was made years prior but Jackson opted to start from scratch this started out with a script that featured a beginning sequence that introduces us to Jack Driscoll who was a young pilot during World War I in 1917 him and his friend are flying their sop with camel biplanes before they're attacked by German bombers when their planes are shot down the battle continues on the ground with Jack's friend getting killed by a German soldier who in turn is killed by Jack the story then focuses on an in present day 1933 who is an English archaeologist in Sumatra where she and her team excavate a hind do Shrine the Dig is interrupted by the overweight but Lively Carl denim who is a filmmaker there to make his next picture despite his seemingly friendly demeanor denim has a lack of care for anything but his films at one point his cameraman herb is attacked by a tiger which is eventually scared off by gunfire despite being injured from the attack herb continues to film indicating the kind of work conditions he's subjected to under denim later on in the script herb explains to Anne that according to to denim's logic pain is temporary film is forever the bullets from the gunfire end up hitting a Buddha statue revealing it to be a shell of something inside when the outer layer is broken away the inner statue is revealed to be of Kong himself with a map of Skull Island engraved on a plaque under it and for their own separate reasons Carl and Anne both want to make the trip over there but in this script they really don't like each other through a series of events that I won't get into for the sake of brevity they eventually make their way onto the island when they eventually reach it they discover ruins more statues of Kong and run into the Island's natives who are hostile at first but then welcome the newcomers with some kind of fermented drink soon englehorn and denim along with a few Sailors are drunk and celebrating with the natives as they prepare for their ceremony what they don't realize is they're being prepared as sacrifices Jack notices this and shoots one of the natives right as they're about to kill englehorn our character characters are then chased back to their ship but before they can leave an is kidnapped causing everyone to go back to save her this time arming themselves with Thompson machine guns from here we get the usual story of an being tied to an altar the ceremony commencing Kong is summoned and he takes his sacrifice this prompts the group to head into the jungle after him where they encounter all sorts of dinosaurs including lambasa and kyasa and Brontosaurus in fact this early script had a stampede scene in it as well only in this first iteration the brontosaurs were chased by 9ft tall carnitor later to be changed to the fictional raptor-like venatosaurus the scene plays out similarly to the final product the group is engulfed by the stampeding brontosaurs and have to avoid getting stepped on and avoid getting eaten by the carnotaur before one of the men in the group shoots out one of the brontosaurs causing it to fall leading to a domino effect of all the other brontosaurus tripping over each other the surviving Carnotaurus is chase after the group but in this version of the script herb is able to make it as he's saved by denim who pushes a boulder on one of the dinosaurs that tries to go after him this leads us to the raft scene which initially had three oversized axelos later to be changed to the pyanodon after the attack the group make it onto Shore and what follows is a pretty [ __ ] up scene one of the Axel emerges from the water and goes after herb on Shore but is shot down by one of the sailors before the giant amphibian is killed however it ends up eating the camera that herb was holding denim then orders herb to retrieve the camera from the dead animal which herb attempts to do by opening its mouth and reaching inside unfortunately for herb the Axel turns out to still be alive and Chomps the poor cameram man up and of course denim is just very insensitive about the whole thing the next animals they encounter are a few Triceratops that one of the men end up shooting which Kong hears in the distance he makes his way over to the group of men who at this this point are trying to cross a log Kong shakes them off the log and they fall down the pit where they encounter all kinds of oversized creepy crawlies like spiders centipedes and crabs meanwhile an gets attacked by an Allosaurus which Kong fights off before two more allosauruses jump into The Fray Kong kills one by shoving a tree into its mouth so hard that it pierces through the back of its head the second one is killed after Kong breaks its back and the third one is subjected to the iconic jaw splitting death from the original movie later that night after Anne and Kong Bond Jack attempts to rescue Anne before encountering an elasmosaurus when he finally reaches Anne he grabs onto the leg of a reptilian bat thing and with Anne holding his waist the two are lifted off from Kong's Lair before letting go to fall into the waters below the rest of the group managed to make it back to the native's Village which gets torn up by Kong as he continues to follow Jack and and threw it denim who initially didn't even want to capture Kong and instead wanted to leave the island as soon as he could finally has the last minute idea to take the giant ape back to New York to profit off of him so denim shoots at Kong's knee and when he's down Denim and the rest of the sailors beat against the ape's head until he's unconscious much to an's dismay Kong is brought to New York and is put in a theater to be shown off to everyone which Anne attempts to stop denim trying to take advantage of the situation allows a bunch of photographers to take pictures of the moment but this distresses the already confused com Kong causing him to break out and stomp on denim the scene is followed with Kong escaping the theater and following Jack and Anne who are driving through town in a stolen cab jack crashes the cab while trying to escape the giant gorilla and Anne takes the opportunity to go to Kong to get him to calm down Kong takes her to the Empire State Building and Jack steals a nearby by plane that was used as promotional material for a World War I movie outside of theater he uses the plane to try to interfere with the Navy planes ordered to shoot k Kong thinking his plane to be a threat Kong grabs Jack's plane but he's able to jump out last minute land on top of the building and meets with an Kong is then shot by the Navy planes and in his final acts of life he picks up Anne to hold her one last time before sending her back down to Jack and falls off the building the movie would reuse the ending from the unmade Legend of King Kong movie where a policeman would state that the planes had gotten Kong only for an old woman who was once again planned to be a cameo by Fay Ray to disagree and respond with the classic line it wasn't the airplane it was Beauty killed the Beast this script was made back around the mid to late '90s and the reason why Universal didn't go for it was because two other monster movies were being worked on and released around the same time that being 1998's Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young both of these movies didn't do well in theaters which in turn worried Universal about releasing their own monster movie of a similar nature so they postponed the project and when Jackson finally came back to do it several years later changes were made to it that made it more faithful to the original Skull Island Skull Island was meant to be the sequel to Peter Jackson's King Kong film from 2005 at the time Jackson was considering people like Joe Cornish and garl Del Toro but it was later revealed that he also considered director Adam winguard in one interview wiard explains that around 2013 Jackson had approached him with the idea a that was being worked on by Universal while development didn't get far apparently Jackson had a rough idea for a potential plot he was thinking of actually making it a sort of prequel to his 2005 film by setting it in World War I winguard wasn't interested in that outline because at the time he was working on his own World War I film and felt that if he were to take on a King Kong movie he'd want to set it in modern day windguard would work with movie producer Simon Barrett to create a rough outline for the story of what winguard remembers there would have been a rather interesting beginning sequence according to a 2021 interview with den of Geeks he stated I remember a couple of details it was modern day there was some sort of opening scene where characters were in a museum and they're talking then at the end of the scene it's revealed that the museum has these giant king kong bones he's like this Relic from the past and Skull Island is sort of a myth and nobody knows what happened to it and somehow these characters are going back there winguard continues the interview saying that he also remembers an element to the story where the island would have had cloaking technology but he doesn't fully remember in the end Universal ended up canceling the project Kong Skull Island original story when legendary obtained the rights to King Kong they took a very big departure with him from the other films when they made Kong Skull Island as a way to introduce him to the monsterverse franchise the film had some differences in it it early stages originally there was going to be a beginning sequence that featured us and Japanese soldiers who somehow land on Skull Island during World War II they'd be fighting on the beach of the island before a large gorilla emerges from the Jungle the idea was that this gorilla would purposely be given many similarities to the one from 2005 because in the next part of this scene that very gorilla would be killed by legendary's much bigger Kong the scene was meant as a fun little jab to Peter Jackson's King Kong and to show the audience that this one is not like that 2005 version this current version was much bigger and as a result more threatening obviously the idea of the sequence was scrapped apparently dinosaurs were also added to the script at one point but these were cut due to the director Jordan vot Roberts wanting his version of King Kong to be different than the previous iterations so original fictional creatures were conceptualized many of which went unused including giant bugs giant turtles a flamco like bird and a mandal likee serpent with tiny legs at least according to La's book and of course there was also the spirit tiger an antler white tiger that was also cut from the movie and finally there was an idea for there to be a village of people that were separate from the natives of the island and they would have been survivors of accidents that marooned them onto the island and they would reside in a place called Boat City which would have been made out of the remains of old damaged and rusted boats aside from that there's not much else Changed by the final film well those were all of the King Kong movies that were never made there's a lot of interesting ideas here and it's too bad that at least some of them never came to fruition also it's possible that this isn't the most definitive list there were some examples in LA's book that I kind of just axed out of this list because I don't know I kind of just didn't think they were fit enough to be Kong movies but then again I'm always making exceptions for this so maybe I should have included them I don't know if there's anything that I'm missing I'll definitely make a follow-up video but for now I'm kind of happy where I'm leaving this list once again huge shout out to John L's book for helping out with this video it was a great guideline and a massive help when it came to the research if you want to check out the book yourself or read up on the second edition of it I'll leave links for where you can get those down below I hope you guys had a great 2023 and I hope you have a great 2024 thank you all so much for the support that you've shown this channel in the past year I'm always grateful for being able to cover these topics and I can't wait to show you guys what I have planned for 2024 if you want to support the channel in other ways you can always check out my patreon page thank you again for everything and please have a nice day

Channel: Dino Diego

Views: 80,178

Keywords: Every King Kong Movie That Was Never Made, king kong, godzilla x king the new empire, monsterverse, king kong vs godzilla, godzilla, mechani kong, 2005 king kong, 1933 king kong, 1976 king kong, king kong escapes, willis obrien, merian cooper, jim danforth, dino de laruentiis, peter jackson, dinosaurs, king kong vs tyrannosaurus rex, skull island, baboon a tale about a yeti, son of kong, kong skull island, orca the killer whale, king kong vs orca, king kong vs frankenstein

Id: HBOR6f6hozE

Length: 82min 58sec (4978 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2024