Put Julia Roberts On Hold: Seven Big-Name Movies That Have Yet to Reach Theaters or DVD

The Julia Roberts, Jim Carrey and Catherine Zeta-Jones movies you won't be seeing any time soon.

“Hippie Hippie Shake”

You remember the heady days of 2007? The first iPhone was released, Avril Lavigne was topping the charts, and Cillian Murphy and Sienna Miller were going to be movie stars. Although both have gone on to steady work, “Hippie Hippie Shake” was tipped to be their bid (and Universal Pictures’) for Oscar gold — an adaptation of ’60s provocateur Richard Neville’s memoir of the obscenity trial that dogged his Oz magazine after allowing some teenagers edit the publication, which included a parody of a sexually explicit R. Crumb cartoon.

Married collaborators Beeban Kidron (“Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”) and Academy Award-nominated scribe Lee Hall (“Billy Elliot”) had wrapped production on film in the summer of ’07, only to see it languish in post-production and ultimately leaving the edit bay in 2009 due to “creative differences” with the film’s British-based producer Working Title.

There may not be any winners from the film, which still hasn’t been released in any form, but Miller walked away with £37,500, the biggest payout at the time for an invasion of privacy lawsuit, after the Sun and News of the World published full-frontal pictures of her from the film’s set. And soon it will pass “Young Americans,” the Topher Grace-Anna Faris comedy that shot in February 2007, as the longest tenant on Universal’s shelf — that film is set to finally be released two months shy of its fourth birthday in December 2010.

“The Rebound”

If you take a trip to Italy, you could see the Roman Colosseum, take in the Tuscan countryside and return to your hotel room to watch “The Rebound,” a romantic comedy starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as a suburban mom who takes off for the city when she’s discovers her husband has cheated on her and starts to fall for her kids’ babysitter (Justin Bartha), who is in a similarly unstable marriage.

The film, written and directed by “Myth of Fingerprints” helmer Bart Freundlich, was supposed to be the first release of The Film Department, the production company started by former Warner Independent chief Mark Gill, and in other parts of the world, it was, hitting theaters in Mexico, Israel and Indonesia before their second production, “Law Abiding Citizen,” came around.

But save for a USA Today article from a year ago — timed to Bartha’s increased notoriety from “The Hangover” — and a trailer without a distributor attached, no American would have any idea this film exists unless they’ve read festival coverage from last year’s Tokyo Film Festival or the more recent Edinburgh Film Festival. Whether they ever will remains a question, as Film Department recently raised funds in a public offering to potentially self-distribute “The Rebound” and the Kate Hudson/Gael Garcia Bernal romcom “Earthbound” from “The Woodsman” director Nicole Kassell and continue production on others.

“Manure” and “Stay Cool”

Mark and Michael Polish, the twins behind “Northfolk” and “Twin Falls Idaho,” thought they had figured out a new way to make mid-budget independent films. Unfortunately, it appears they still haven’t figured out a way to distribute them. With Prohibition Pictures, the Polish brothers created a studio that would make two films instead of one and keep much of the same crew employed throughout and recycling a lot of the same sets and equipment, eliminating many of a production’s start-up costs.

They also found no shortage of famous actors to help them with their first two films: “Manure” stars Billy Bob Thornton and Ed Helms in a ’50s set comedy about fertilizer salesmen tasked with helping a widow (Téa Leoni) keep up her family business, and “Stay Cool,” a comedy starring Mark Polish as a famous author who returns home to give a commencement address and gets pulled back in with the townies he left behind including Sean Astin, Josh Holloway, Winona Ryder, Chevy Chase and Hilary Duff.

“Manure” and “Stay Cool” premiered in early 2009 as a one-two punch at Sundance and Tribeca, respectively, but failed to knock out distributors. Strangely, according to IMDb, “Manure” has been given a new title (“The Smell of Success”) and both films have suspicious new directors credited on their official sites: Larry Smith on “The Smell of Success” and Ted Smith on “Stay Cool.” At least, these could be indications a release of some kind is in the offing, but besides shady changes in the director’s chair, there are other signs the Polish brothers have moved on — in May, they announced they were making the romantic drama “For Lovers Only” with “Castle” star Stana Katic and a month later, a teaser trailer surfaced for their take on “Wizard of Oz.”

[Additional photos: "The Poughkeepsie Tapes," MGM, 2007; "Stay Cool" and "Manure," Prohibition Pictures, 2009]

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