Column Chronicles: Rejected pitches to develop major motion pictures

Rejected pitches to develop major motion pictures

Frank Cotolo
January 22, 2026

Every day of every week of every month of every year finds thousands of film ideas pitched to movie corporations and independent investors. For the most part it is screenwriters and directors pitching the powers that be. A miniscule percent of them are financed to move on to the development stage. Through our deep sources in the movie industry we present some of the brief pitches for story-to-film projects that have been rejected this year.

Romance ensues when an FBI agent falls for a terminally ill woman who threatens to revel secrets he told her while bowling.

A woman dying of a rare disease adopts a German Shepherd to make her happy while she searches for a cure.

A concrete mason smuggles Cuban cigars into the USA with the help of a quick-change artist suffering from Tricinosis.

The cure for cancer is found by an Amish wife canning grape jelly.

In an animated sequel to Alice In Wonderland, Alice has grown up and invested in a major department store merger between Walmart and Costco and is sued by both of the stores' stockholders when she calls the new chain stores Costmart Walco.

In a remote village where the entire population lives by superstition, one woman's skepticism threatens to break all of the village's mirrors.

An Italian bootmaker in the 1600s is commanded to make a pair of boots for the king but accidentally invents minestrone soup.

When a herd of wild boars grows bigger while rampaging through the northwest USA, an inexperienced cowpoke recruits a team of convicted prisoners to chase the herd over the highest cliff in Montana.

The story of Jean Mardosian, the founder of the plastic shoelace tip, reveals her lack of intuition, cunning, fashion, loyalty, ego, style, culture, cleanliness, aggression, direction, civility and interest, all of which leads to her demise.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.