Like any great director, Tim Burton has a laundry list of movies he would have loved to have made, and some are more well-known than others. For years, DC Comics fans hoped his Batman Continues project would have come to life, and those same fans were grateful his vision for Superman never fully did. Beyond the films that had mainstream name-value, there were plenty of oddities along the way that Burton’s creepy fingers could have done some fascinating things with. Then there were his passion projects, which would have enticed most of his fandom but maybe not have reached masses outside of that limited window.
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Over the years, we’ve learned about dozens of potential Burton-backed projects that never made it to the finish line — and many of which barely had a chance to step up to the starting line. Whether it was finding investors, poor timing or simply a bad idea, these run the gamut of genres that would have been a perfect fit for the auteur director. From retro remakes to unexpected IP’s, here are four of some of the weirder ones — which I want to call “weirdest” but this is Tim Burton we’re talking about and these barely scratch the surface of strange for him — that will make you wonder what could have been.
4) Go Baby Go
Burton has infatuations with all sorts of things the average person might find peculiar, but his interest in the pop-culture zeitgeist of the 1950’s and 60’s makes a lot of sense. These were the films that informed his own work, and left a big impact on him. B-movies remained a critical part of many of Burton’s movies, and Go Baby Go might have been the perfect sum of all of those parts. Intended to be an homage to sexploitation director Russ Meyer and beach party movies from the 50’s, its script was written by Jonathan Gems, whose name you will see connected to Burton across many projects. The story centered around three go-go dancers who become victims of a mad science experiment that causes them to grow 300 feet tall. What does a giant woman do when that happens? Hit the beach, of course, and stomp all over everyone and everything in her path!
Burton always wanted to make something on the beach like the Annette Funicello & Frankie Avalon movies, but with Burton’s otherworldly twist to them such as another failed project of a similar topic, Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. He’s had a tough time getting something like that to go further than the concept phase, but that might be a good thing. Go Baby Go is similar to another movie you’ll read about lower on this list that also never moved beyond a rough draft on paper. This feels like it could have had Quentin Tarantino vibes to it if done properly, making for something a little bit wacky and mature all in the same breath. It’s also the type of movie that might not have aged well for Burton or any director sitting in the chair for it, so this might have been a bullet that he dodged instead of a golden opportunity.
3) Mai, the Psychic Girl
Predating the popularity of Dragon Balland even Akira, this supernatural shonenwas the talk of comic racks in the late 1980’s. Mai, the Psychic Girlwas one of the first manga to be translated and published for American audiences, earning it a place as one of the seminal Japanese comics from the 80’s for Western markets. Written by Kazuya Kudo with art by Ryoichi Ikegami, the story centered on a teen with psychic abilities named Mai who is chased by an evil illuminati-like organization with plans for world domination.
The driving force behind bringing this manga to the big screen wasn’t Burton at first, but new wave rock band Sparks, who saw this as a musical perfect for their brand of tunes. Burton agreed in the early 90’s, no stranger to working with people from a similar band background such as Danny Elfman. Plans trudged forward but the project never got off the ground beyond the initial phase. Instead, Burton began work on The Nightmare Before Christmas and Ed Wood, leaving the film rights for Mai to expire before the director officially exited the project. Decades later, Sparks has remained committed to the concept, and Burton has commented that he wouldn’t mind taking it on if he could, so perhaps we haven’t seen the last of Mai, the Psychic Girlyet.
2) Dinosaurs Attack!
Believe it or not, Tim Burton was one of the directors in the running for Jurassic Park, but there was another prehistoric property he had an interest in bringing to the big screen before that ever happened. Dinosaurs Attack! was a trading card series made by Topps in the late 1980’s, featuring a bizarre time-travel plot that ends up sending bloodthirsty dinosaurs into modern times. Their paper-thin story included a Satanic dinosaur deity known as the Supreme Monstrosity pulling the strings from another dimension. The cards were violent and gory, which was incredibly shocking at the time as these were intended for kids, but that graphic shock value was what helped them become so popular.
Screenwriter Jonathan Gems penned a story based on these 55 trading cards, but he and Burton ultimately threw in the towel thanks to concerns that their film was too similar to (you guessed it) Jurassic Park. However, while this film wasn’t produced by Burton, another vintage collectible in a similar vein was. Mars Attacks!was also based on a set of graphically violent Topps trading cards that predated the Dino cards by over 20 years, acting as a preview of what Dinosaurs Attack! could have been (and also leaving us wondering what a Burton-directed Jurassic Park would have looked like).
1) House of Wax
Burton’s admiration of Vincent Price has been seen throughout many of his works, including one of his earliest stop-motion animated shorts and Price’s appearance in Edward Scissorhands. There was one Price-led horror picture that Burton had an interest in, and that was creating a remake of the 1953 horror film House of Wax. However, this wasn’t going to be just any remake – this was set to be a horror musical with Michael Jackson in the starring role. However, Burton was never able to find any backers to support this endeavor. The only person who agreed to come on board was the King of Pop, meaning even with the full support of Jackson this movie still couldn’t find backing.
Years later in 2024, Burton was rumored to remake another B-movie, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. However, Burton has since remained quiet about the project and even downplaying his role in it, while Margot Robbie was rumoredto be the leading lady and producer for this sci-fi cult classic. Burton was seen at this past year’s Cannes Film Festival supposedly meeting with potential investors for a “top-secret project.” Whether that was this or something else from his long list of ideas remains to be seen, but whatever Burton works on next will certainly be something worth looking out for.
Which of these four movies would you have wanted to see Tim Burton do, or was there something else completely different that you wish he directed? Let us know in the comments below.
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