14 Movies That Took Over a Decade to Make
2014’s Boyhood took 12 years to make. Some of these films make Boyhood look like an episode of South Park.
‘Kill It and Leave This Town’: 14 Years
Polish animator Mariusz Wilczyński set out to make a short animated film about a person whose entire family dies, so they run off to a land of memories where time doesn’t exist and everyone is alive. At some point, Wilczyński decided it should actually become a feature length psychological horror, which took just a smidge longer to animate.
‘The Evil Within’: 15 Years
Writer/director Andrew Getty self-financed this horror film, which was based on his childhood nightmares, for about $6 million. He filmed his deepest fears inside his own mansion, toiled away for years on special effects, and died before he could finish. The producer had to do the final editing to get it across the finish line.
‘Pakeezah’: 16 Years
The director and lead actress of this musical romance drama were a married couple, but an astounding eight years into filming, they separated. It took the other two lead actors another five years to convince the couple to finish the film.
‘The Goat Life’: 16 Years
Single-name Indian director Blessy took on this novel adaptation in 2008, the year the book came out. He had trouble keeping producers on board and money flowing in, but things started looking up — in 2018. The pandemic then gummed up the works for years, and it finally released in 2024.
‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’: 16 Years
This one still isn’t out, but is slated for 2025. James Cameron has been chipping away at this movie since the original Avatar came out, blew everyone’s minds, and made him decide to bite off two sequels at the same time.
‘Coffee and Cigarettes’: 18 Years
This is an anthology of vignettes that all involve coffee and cigarettes in some way, so it’s safe to assume that bathroom breaks had something to do with the marathon production. The first short film was shot in 1986, before Joe Camel came to the United States, and the film was released in 2003, after Joe Camel was merced by the FTC.
‘5-25-77’: 18 Years
This film stars alpha geek John Francis Daley as a young, aspiring sci-fi director who is obsessed with Star Wars (the original Star Wars came out on May 25, 1977, hence the title). It was mostly filmed between 2004 and 2006, but director Patrick Read Johnson wanted to get a few more shots as late as 2016, and then screwed around with special effects for another few years. Johnson screened rough cuts at a few Star Wars events over the years, but finally dropped the finished product in 2022.
‘Dangerous Men’: 21 Years
Writer/director/producer Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad gives Tommy Wiseau a run for his money in terms of disjointed production and incomprehensible screenplay. Not to mention: He goes by the pen name John S. Rad. This movie was filmed in 1984, and was screened in 1985, but Rad spent another couple of decades tinkering before releasing it in a few L.A. theaters in 2005, when it finally became the cult classic it was always destined to be.
‘The Tragedy of Man’: 23 Years
This is an animated epic drama about God and the devil duking it out over humanity. Pretty rad stuff. Animator Marcell Jankovics knew that most Hungarian animations took about three years to make, and this one was twice as long, so he blocked out six years. The fall of Hungarian communism threw a wrench in the gears, and this bad boy wasn’t completed for over two decades.
‘The Primevals’: 29 Years
This was a passion project of stop-motion animator David Allen, who actually cooked the idea up in the ‘60s. Allen died in 1999, well before the film was finished, but left the sets and puppets to his colleague, Chris Endicott, who finally got it across the finish line in 2023.
‘The Thief and the Cobbler’: 20 Years
This was the crown jewel of animator and voice actor Richard Williams’ career — or at least, it was supposed to be. He had been tinkering since the ‘60s, but finally received full funding after crushing it with the animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In retrospect, Williams got a little too precious with it — the film went over budget and blew past deadlines, he was taken off the project, and it was beaten to and at the box office by Disney’s Aladdin (which many consider a blatant rip-off).
‘Mad God’: 30 Years
VFX guru Phil Tippett came up with the idea for this stop-motion horror movie while working on RoboCop 2, but then determined that CGI was the future of cinema while working on Jurassic Park, and got discouraged. Colleagues worked on him for 20 years before he picked it back up, finally releasing it in 2021.
‘The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi et l'Oiseau)’: 33 Years
This French animated feature began production in 1948, and a half-assed, dogshit version was released by its producer in 1952, without the approval of the director or writer. Director Paul Grimault was able to purchase the rights in 1967, and cobbled together the now-revered updated version in 1980.
‘BalikBayan #1: Memories of Overdevelopment, Redux VII’: 45 Years
Renowned (and weird) Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik began filming his epic tale of Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the Earth in 1978, piling up mountains of 60-mm acetate film. He continued filming over the next several decades, using a mishmash of contemporary equipment, eventually having to weave together everything from acetate film to digital files.
