Among others, I would love to take a stab at doing a very linear, accurate rendition of H. G. Wells time machine. All the movies have made the equipment too decorative. The time machine wasn't ornate in the least. It had elements of a sextant and old brass microscopes from the 19th century, but generally I got the impression it looked like a big mass spectrometer with a motorcycle seat, mounted inside a dune buggy's roll cage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry
The moorlocks never looked right, they were supposed to be graceful lemur-like creatures. Cgi could really do the time trip now, what's more, nobody ever shows him driving the time machine up to where the sun is starting to go red giant.
__ I might do Frankenstein as a kind crime caper. I'd get Justin Timberlake to play Victor Frankenstein, he'd play him Reeeally German! The kind of cheerful German that when you say you bought tickets to the planetarium, he cheerfully says, "I want to see your main marketplace, you will now take me to your city's largest farmer's market." and other Germanic utterances like, "No, no, What is this--this is no good: we will use the other one." I think Justin Timberlake could get that manic excitement, a real "Damn the consequences, full speed ahead!" attitude. He'd have a big dollop of Nietzsche, and a dash of Mengele, a mix of supreme arrogance, and puppy like enthusiasm about doing stuff to people that would make either of them cringe. Cut people apart, and sew them back together again, and make them/it live through pain that had already killed it/them once already, all with an attitude of, "Hey WOW! Neato! Look what I can do!"
_ Oh, and the monster, I like to see Aston Kutcher play him! An Adonis lying on the table, but then he looks like he survived a skydiving accident without a 'chute when he gets up and starts moving around. Aston Kutcher has a way of kind of panicking and flailing his arms, kind of lashing out while he yells, "Bwaaah-ugh!" It would be funny to show this great big monster throw his hands up "like a little girl", except when HE does it and flails around in a panic, he breaks people and attack dogs in half!
___The third of many things I'd like to see is a treatment of the new testament stories, the gospels, where all of the Jews are played by mostly Sephardic Jews, and the Romans are all played by Italians. I was originally picturing Adam Goldberg playing Jesus, but it turns out that HE might not even be Jewish enough! Oh well... in this imaginary casting call we could get Speed Levitch to play John the baptist, and, although this is totally breaking the mould, st. Peter seems an awful lot like Larry the Cable Guy. I know! but it would be a lot of fun to see Jesus and his dad wearing tool belts and wielding nail guns on a construction site. It's as if I can't make up my mind whether I'd like to see an accurate period piece, or all of the events transposed onto the modern era.
I've picked my Pontius Pilate years ago. I want Al Pacino. Imagine an almost sympathetic bureaucrat Pacino at the trial, saying lines like, "Listen, pal, you're not making my job any easier...Why don't you go ahead and deny the charges, and I'll see what I can do. Hey, I'm dying out here, I can't help you out here if you don't give me anything to work with!" and so forth. Al Pacino can really display the pain of the world on his face, and that's what a bureaucrat in a sucky position between a rock and a hard place needs to show. There's the sympathetic centurion, the one who said I tell this man "go over there." and he goes over there, I tell another "do this" and he does it, so I know power when I see it, just say the word and it'll be done. Maybe he could be played by Ray Romano.
I've often thought that if a guy wandered around and said the EXACT same things that Jesus said, and said them today, would we kill him all over again? Well, that probably depends on context. Do that in California, you'd probably form a following and a free store and food pantry, do that in Mecca and you'd probably be stoned. (not in the good way) Imagine a guy in Mecca saying "I am the only begotten son of Allah, he is my father." He wouldn't last a week, not to mention several years.
__ What if we set the whole shebang in Iraq? Volatile enough, various factions fighting for control... conflicting beliefs... an occupation force...
That could be either the Romans OR the Americans. What if it is both of them, one and the same, spread out over two thousand years? Imagine that all those Italian guys are U.S. soldiers, and that Pontius Pilate is an American general in charge of a region in Iraq. There is rumor of Insurrection, and one of some terrorist leader's guys sold out this dude, but General Pilate really can't figure out what this guy was supposed to have done. The guys that turned him in said it's blasphemy, but General Pilate can't find anything that the dude has actually DONE, so he holds him a long time waterboards him a good bit... and you basically know the rest.
__ Last but not least, if we hurry up we could actually squeeze this one in:
I'd like to see Anthony and Cleopatra done by George Clooney and Lady Gaga. There is a certain goofiness to their relationship, the practical jokes they played one another. Imagine George Clooney in his men who stare at goats persona, and Lady Gaga is kinky enough to do all of the Cleopatra stuff too, and they are pretty good physical matches for historical characters, and their age separation is even about right.
After I read about Anthony and Cleopatra, and pictured Clooney and Gaga, several months later they came out with the first previews of "Hail Caesar!" and I went, "D'oh!" so much for originality....
So, if I win the powerball, expect to see these movies about two years later.