Save Us Joe Louis
Potential Cast: Terrence Howard

We're as surprised as anybody that two films written by What Makes Sammy Run? author Budd Schulberg, a writer best known for his script for 1954's On the Waterfront, are making this list of unmade classics. The most intriguing, however, is Save Us Joe Louis, a drama about the 1930s rivalry between the African-American boxer and German Max Schmelling shortly before World War II. Spike Lee, who planned to direct the film in September 2001, told The New York Times earlier that year, "The subject matter is wonderful: Hitler, Goebbels, F.D.R., Mussolini. We see it in the same genre as the David Lean epics such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai." Nonetheless Joe Louis wasn't heard from again until 2005, when Lee insisted that the film would follow Inside Man. He even found a leading man in Hustle and Flow's Terrence Howard, but Lee's busy schedule after his first hit in years has left the director without time to lace up his boxing gloves.

Project Status: Call it a TKO for now, since Lee has the potential Tom Cruise thriller Selling Time and a sequel to Inside Man in the works.

NEXT: Tripoli, potentially starring Russell Crowe