War of the Worlds (1953) was the result of a decades-long development history
Producer George Pal wasn't the first to consider bringing the story to the big screen.
Some stories stay in perpetual purgatory. The history of the big screen is littered with "What ifs" and "Could've beens" that nearly lit up the cinemas, but for one crucial piece. Some of the best movies just never get made.
Notable examples include the infamous Atuk, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Gremlins 3, each one either an adaptation or a sequel that, for decades, failed to materialize. These are all long-gestating and ultimately abandoned projects that just never came to fruition. While they all generated tons of excitement from potential directors and even a ticket-buying audience, these movies all languished in "Development Hell."
Another example of the phenomenon is the long-awaited cinematic version of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. While audiences are now able to look back at two critically-acclaimed versions of the story on the screen (and countless imitators), there were years in the past when a proper adaptation seemed unlikely.
John M. Miller of Turner Classic Movies dove deep into the project's history for an article about the 1953 film. In it, Miller recounts how producer George Pal— fresh off the success of When Worlds Collide— needed another property to spin into a blockbuster success.
"Searching about for another science-fiction story to produce as his next film, Pal stumbled upon several unproduced scripts in Paramount's story files based on the H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds. His discovery highlighted a property that, due to story and budget difficulties, already had a decades-long development history. The adaptation that Pal eventually made was destined to be one of the key films of the 1950s science fiction cycle and one of the best films of its type ever made."
Pal wasn't the first Hollywood honcho to consider adapting the story, as it had previously been a much sought-after property. It seems that, throughout the decades, many notable names understood the power of The War of the Worlds, and the way the 1898 novel could capture contemporary audiences' attention, regardless of when it was made.
"One who recognized that Wells' story would make an exciting motion picture was director Cecil B. DeMille, one of the most influential film makers of the silent era. Soon after the epic-making success of The Ten Commandments (1923), DeMille's studio, Paramount Pictures, bought the film rights to the Wells book— in perpetuity— in 1925. A script was written by Roy Pomeroy, but it went unproduced.
In 1930, the noted Russian director Sergei Eisenstein (The Battleship Potemkin [1925]), traveled to Hollywood to make a picture; Paramount offered him the property and another screenplay was written, but Eisenstein opted for another studio's offer.
Finally, in 1938 a version of The War of the Worlds was produced in the United States which created a media sensation. It was not a motion picture, however, but the Mercury Theater on the Air radio play conceived by Orson Welles and written by Howard Koch as a series of modern-day news bulletins detailing an invasion force landing in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. The Halloween broadcast was a sensation and brought the story to the forefront of the public's consciousness. Paramount, however, was not keen on producing a movie depicting violent war from outer space at a time when real war was being waged in Europe.
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