20 pre-2000s movies that would not get made today

Just looking at the picture, it’s clear why this movie starring C. Thomas Howell would not get touched with a 10-foot pole today.

While Rent-a-Kid was stacked with comedic icons like Leslie Nielsen and Christopher Lloyd, the premise is a bit out there. Nielsen owns a rental store, while his son runs an orphanage. However, when his son tasks him with running the place while he’s away, Nielsen figures he will put the two together. Renting children seemed odd in 1995, and almost 20 years later, it’s just not the move to make.

Marvel hasn’t been shy about placing Howard the Duck in cameos in recent years, and while they may just give him a movie or series one day, chances are it will lack certain scenes in which a human woman hooks up with an anthropomorphic duck.

With all the information that’s come out against theme parks that feature live animals in captivity, as well as the documentary Blackfish, the likelihood of Free Willy being made in the 21st century is slim to none.

Weird Science was remade once in the ‘90s as a TV series, but since then, the idea of a couple of computer nerds making the “perfect woman” seems cringe. However, with all the talk of AI and the rise of influencers, don’t be shocked if a remake of this does slip through the cracks. If it did, though, chances are it would not be well received.

Some movies feel like they were meant for a certain time and place, and the crude and obscure humor of Austin Powers feels so antiquated at this point that only Gen X and older millennials would welcome a reboot of sorts.

A bunch of kids locking their parents in the basement until they resolved their various issues, even for the ‘90s, was wild.

Between the overt hazing and bullying to the most iconic line from the movie that Matthew McConaughey says, there would have to be some changes made to this to get it greenlit today.

It’s not that Beethoven was in any way, shape, or form a controversial movie; it’s that family movies like that feel like a bit of a lost art form nowadays, sadly.

When people think of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, they either think of the book or the Disney adaptation, and while the animated version might be a hard sell today, the live-action version of this tale is even crazier. So much so that it’d be hard to find anyone who even remembers it existed back in 1997.

Partly because it’s not that great, but mostly because movies where a white person finds themselves in an inner-city school for comedic effect just aren’t what moviegoers head out to theaters for anymore.

Reading the plot makes it seem much more insane than it actually is, but there is something that doesn’t age too well about a movie in which kids hire a sex worker for one of their fathers.

If LeBron James’ Space Jam proved anything, it’s that ‘90s movies starring basketball players should never be remade or revisited.

Forrest Gump is one of the most celebrated films in the history of cinema, but even Tom Hanks knows that this is not a movie that would likely get made in the present day, especially with him as the lead. He told The New York Times that Gump and Philadelphia were “timely movies, at the time, that you might not be able to make now.”

A lack of legit child stars, and the fact that Problem Child’s plot is pretty out there, even by today’s standards. Those are all the reasons this would not be made today, not even a remake.

A movie about bikini-clad women trying to find a rare diamond. Not something that even a low-tier streamer would release.

One of the hardest movies to watch and often considered a one-and-done sort of film, Kids makes Euphoria feel like Degrassi.

Jamie Foxx has done so much good, but  Booty Call was not one of those things. With lowbrow sexual humor and a lackluster plot, it’s just not one of the better in the genre of sex comedies for a reason.

Not sure how the Goodfellas of children’s movies got released in the first place, but there is no way it’d happen again.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is actually a delightful comedy, but it starts pretty dark, and it’s something that audiences today would not appreciate as much as people did back in the early ‘90s.