From <em>E.T. 2</em> to <em>Friday the 13th: 3-D</em>: the <em>Best Movies Never Made</em>

On their film podcast, Best Movies Never Made, hosts Stephen Scarlata and Josh Miller rake over the ashes of movie projects which didn&apos;t actually make it to the big screen, often with a writer or director who saw their dreams go up in flames along the way. "But all of our guests afterward have said, &apos;That was like therapy, that was really cathartic to finally tell the story.&apos;"Scarlata became interested in unmade movies, and unmade versions of movies, when he discovered that David Cronenberg had once been set to direct Total Recall, a film which was ultimately made by Paul Verhoeven."It started in high school," he says. I was like, &apos;I feel you should do more.&apos; A podcast felt like a natural evolution."Scarlata and Miller&apos;s guests have included Detroit Rock City director Adam Rifkin, who discussed his attempt to reboot the Planet of the Apes franchise in the late &apos;80s, and Cube filmmaker Vincenzo Natali, who talked about collaborating with fellow sci-fi auteur Richard Stanley on a never-made adaptation of J.G. Ballard&apos;s High Rise."For some people, it’s more painful than for others, often depending on how close they got," says Miller. Spielberg was clearly like, "Wait, let’s just make a whole movie out of this kid and the cute alien."SCARLATA: E.T. came out on June 11, 1982 and just became this huge hit. The first half is all kind of nighttime-y stuff and, then once Jason shows up, it’s all bright daylight, just insane death everywhere.SCARLATA: This movie should have been made. That sequence forever stuck in my mind.SPIDER-MANMILLER: We did four episodes following this fascinating trajectory in the ‘80s where Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of Cannon Film Group got the rights to Spider-Man, and tried to make the movie, and then eventually James Cameron was trying to do it. It’s one of the best scripts we’ve ever read, that just hasn’t been made.SCARLATA: It’s one of the most painful ones that we didn&apos;t get in the mid-90s, because it would have just killed, for kids, for adults.MILLER: Sometimes you&apos;ll read a script, and it’s a lot of fun, but you also get why it didn’t get made. But Johnny Quest is one of those movies where it’s like, they should have made this movie.