Justin Timberlake as Neil Bogart? 5 Hot Cannes Projects That Went Absolutely Nowhere

Lights, cameras, attention! With approximately 90 percent of the world’s media decamping on a relatively small stretch of coastline for a week in May, there’s good reason why the Cannes Film Festival has become a popular spot to make a flashy film announcement. But as anyone who has been to a few press conferences and launch parties will know, not everything that is given a star-fuelled promotional giddy-up on the Croisette is an automatic dead cert (many are anything but). Some projects fizzle and die over the coming years, left to forever roam in “development” limbo land, while others spectacularly burst into flames within hours. Here are a few of the more recent major Cannes launches to never see the light of day.

2013: Justin Timberlake’s Spinning Gold
Throwing a party for a film you haven’t actually found a director for is always a risky affair, but when the force that is Justin Timberlake has signed on to take the lead (and co-produce), then surely it’s worth going a little wild. The star was in Cannes in 2013 to promote Spinning Gold, a high-profile rags-to-riches disco-fueled biopic of iconic 1970s record exec Neil Bogart, teasing guests at the bash with a few lines from hits such as “Last Dance”, “Ain’t No Sunshine” and Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby”. Spike Lee was later tapped to helm, but four years on and the gold has seemingly stopped spinning. Timberlake recently said they had been “chipping away at the material”, which doesn’t exactly sound like it’ll be getting the crowds pumping soon.

The Hollywood Reporter