The Spirit Movie that Never Happened

You've probably seen or at least know about the 2008 movie The Spirit directed by Frank Miller. You might also know that the movie was based on the comic book character created by Will Eisner in the 1940s. For those of you who know both of these things, you're probably very aware that the movie from 2008 does not provide a great representation of the source material. Not only does the movie diverge greatly from the character and stories of the series in the 1940s but in doing so it creates a rather poor movie that has gone down as one of the worst superhero movies of all time. But it could have been different.

Apparently in 1980, there was an attempt to create an animated film based on The Spirit. Nothing more than a three minute animation pencil test ever came of the project but to hear about it makes you wonder what kind of movie we might have gotten had things gone the other way. For instance, Brad Bird was one of the principle people working on the project. Bird, who didn't have any big credits to his name at the time, has since gone on to direct one of the most critically praised animated superhero movies of all time. The Incredibles. The movie was also going to be produced by Gary Kurtz who produced the first Star Wars movie as well as The Empire Strikes Back. With that kind of talent working on a project that everyone was artistically invested in, we can only wonder about what could have been if the animated film had been able to move forward.

Check out the short pencil test of the movie below.