History Main / TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment

* ''Anime/AnneOfGreenGables1979''[='s=] CompilationMovie. The first few episodes were edited by Isao Takahata into a Compilation Movie back in 1989, intended for a theatrical release. The film would ultimately never see the light of day until 2010 when Studio Ghibli picked up the rights for a limited theatrical release and a home video release.

* ''Anime/AkageNoAnne''[='s=] CompilationMovie. The first few episodes were edited by Isao Takahata into a Compilation Movie back in 1989, intended for a theatrical release. The film would ultimately never see the light of day until 2010 when Studio Ghibli picked up the rights for a limited theatrical release and a home video release.

* Similarly, the Disney preschoolers show ''Series/OutOfTheBox'' wrapped up filming in May of 2001, but didn't even begin airing until November of the following year, with the final episodes being aired in September of 2004.
** Before that, there were three episodes from the first season ("Treasures", "The Gift" and "Let's Eat Out") which didn't premiere until season 2 began broadcasting. These episodes only ended up airing a handful of times, since they had already been reworked into episodes for season 2; they are currently the only ones of the show that are not available on Disney+.

* The Fourth series of "WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends" was largely filmed in early to mid-1994, but not a single episode aired on television in the UK until 16 October 1995. Despite this, the season's VHS release began in November 1994, almost a full year earlier.

** ''Homegrown'', the follow-up to ''Tonight's the Night'', spent 45 years after its 1975 recording kicking around in stasis (due to the raw honesty of its recounting of Neil Young's separation from Carrie Snodgrass making the executives uncertain about its sales potential) before finally being released in 2020.

* Little-known New Zealand series ''The Adventures of Voopa the Goolash'' completed production in 2007 according to creator Craig Whyte, though internal studio politics prevented the series from seeing the light of day for over a decade; the studio held the master tapes and refused to let them go. The show was considered lost media until October 2019 when Whyte uploaded the first episode to Website/YouTube; the second episode was uploaded in November 2019, and the remaining eleven followed suit in April 2021.

* ''WebAnimation/BeeAndPuppycat: Lazy in Space'' was originally intended for a 2019 release on Creator/{{VRV}} that never happened, most likely because Sony bought Website/{{Crunchyroll}}, which owns VRV; this resulted in [[Creator/FrederatorStudios Cartoon Hangover]] series leaving VRV. Eventually, Creator/{{Netflix}} [[ChannelHop picked it up]], produced an additional three episodes for viewers who never watched the original, and released it in September 2022.

** Most of season 1 was completed in 1999 (according the copyright in the credits) but didn't wound up airing until 2000.

* ''Error'' from Music/TheWarning was recorded in 2020 but wasn't released in full until 2022 because of COVID-19 related complications.
* Music/TheBeatles recorded the songs which became the album ''Music/LetItBe'' in 1969 but then shelved the whole thing and went back to the studio, producing and releasing ''Music/AbbeyRoad'' in 1969. After Phil Spector dug through the tapes and finished the songs, ''Let It Be'' (along with its accompanying film) was released in 1970.
* When Music/WillieNelson signed with Atlantic Records in 1973 he recorded two albums worth of material at the same sessions. One was his first "outlaw country" album ''Shotgun Willie'', the other was a gospel album called ''The Troublemaker''. Nelson actually thought ''The Troublemaker'' turned out the better of the two, but Atlantic didn't think a gospel album would sell so they shelved it. After releasing one more album on Atlantic (''Phases & Stages'') he moved to Creator/ColumbiaRecords, and Atlantic let him have the master tapes for ''The Troublemaker'', which he finally released on Columbia in 1976.

** David Ball recorded an album for Creator/RCARecords in the 80s, but it wasn't released at the time. After he had a big hit with ''Thinkin' Problem'' on Creator/WarnerBrosRecords in 1994, RCA released the album they were holding onto.
** Music/{{Motorhead}} recorded their first album for United Artists, who refused to release it because they considered it poor quality. After the band rose to fame (with a different record company and everyone other than Lemmy replaced), UA released it as ''On Parole''.
* Sarah Buxton released her debut single "Innocence" in 2006. It and her next two singles didn't do very well, so her album sat for ''four years'' before it was released (although she did put out an EP in the interim). Then her label closed right after the album finally got out.
* Music/ElvisCostello recorded the CoverAlbum ''Kojak Variety'' in 1990 but didn't release it until 1995.
* Music/EltonJohn recorded a 10-song album in 2012 with producer T-Bone Burnett, as the followup to 2010's critically acclaimed, Burnett-produced collaboration with Leon Russell, ''The Union''. It was made as a lean, "back-to-basics" work with emphasis on his piano-playing, largely built around the piano-bass-drums sound Elton adopted in concert in the early 1970's, prior to his successful "glam period". After attempting a May 2012 release date, it was moved to 2013 to allow for better promotional potential. In the meantime, he and lyricist Bernie Taupin noticed a thematic continuity running through most of the songs, wrote a few new songs and discarded one of the originals. The album title was changed to ''Voyeur'', then back to its original title, ''The Diving Board''. It was released in September 2013, and peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200.

* ''Black Bastards'' by KMD, a group featuring a young Music/MFDoom as Zev Love X, was ready for release in 1993, but was shelved until 2001 due to the label's fear of the album's racial content. By the time it was finally released, DOOM's brother Subroc was dead and DOOM had begun his more well-known solo career.
* Music/NeilYoung
** ''Tonight's the Night'' was recorded in 1973, but shelved by the record label because they thought it was too uncommercial. It was eventually released as submitted to the label two years later, and while it didn't sell well to begin with, it was almost immediately canonised as a masterpiece.
** ''Homegrown'', the follow-up to ''Tonight's the Night'', spent 45 years after its 1975 recording kicking around in stasis (due to the raw honesty of its recounting of Neil Young's separation from Carrie Snodgrass making the executives uncertain about its sales potential) before finally being released in 2020.
** ''Toast'' was recorded in 2001, but was shelved because Young thought it was "too sad". It wasn't released until 2022.
** The songs of ''Chrome Dreams'' were recorded from 1974 to 1977, but the album was shelved and all of its songs eventually saw release on other albums, though many of them were rerecorded in different versions. Bootlegs of the original album circulated in the 1990's and a sequel to the album was released in 2007 before it was finally released in 2023.

* Music/FrankZappa's ''Music/{{Lather}}'' was submitted to Warner Brothers in 1977, but due to ExecutiveMeddling, was not released as submitted until 1996. The material intended to be released on the four-LP set was instead divided between four albums (''Music/ZappaInNewYork'', ''Music/StudioTan'', ''Music/SleepDirt'', and ''Music/OrchestralFavorites''), one of them itself a double LP set.
* Music/JohnnyCash's ''Out Among the Stars'' was recorded in 1981 and 1984, but the material was shelved by Columbia Records. A small handful of additional recordings were done in 2013 after Cash's death and the album was finally released in 2014.
* Diana Ross recorded an album titled ''Diana Ross Sings Songs From Theatre/TheWiz'', after landing the role of Dorothy in [[Film/TheWiz the 1978 movie version of the musical]]. Motown originally intended to release the album about a year after the movie's premiere, but decided against it after the film flopped. It finally saw a digital release in November 2015, exactly one week before NBC televised a new adaptation of ''The Wiz'' (which Diana Ross didn't participate in, for the record).
* Music/TheKentuckyHeadhunters recorded ''Meet Me in Bluesland'' with blues pianist Johnnie Johnson (their second collaboration with him) in 2003, but did not release it until 2015.

* British PowerPop group Tonight had their first single "Drummerman" reach number 14 on the British singles charts -- they completed an album in 1978, but it was shelved (perhaps because subsequent singles weren't as successful). The album, also titled ''Drummerman'', finally saw release on an independent label in 2010.
* Music/FearFactory completed what was meant to be their first album in 1991, and its release was meant to launch a record label founded by its RecordProducer, Ross Robinson -- the band didn't like the details of their record contract and wouldn't sign it, so the album was shelved. Robinson kept the commercial rights to the recording, but the band were still allowed to send it out to prospective labels as a demo tape, which got them signed by Roadrunner Records, for whom they re-recorded eight of its songs for their proper debut, ''Soul Of A New Machine''. Eleven years later, the recordings came out on Roadrunner, unsanctioned by the band, and given the new title ''Concrete'' -- according to Burton C. Bell, Robinson had sold the album rights to Roadrunner, who in turn released it when the band broke up one album short of their contractual obligation with the label.
* Music/MeatPuppets had a few. When Curt Kirkwood announced a solo record in 2004, there were a few tracks listed in a ''Magazine/RollingStone'' article. Of the three, only ''Golden Lies'' ended up being on the album. Of the others, Enemy Love Song was recorded and released on Kirkwood's website as a single, but was rerecorded by the reunited Meat Puppets in 2007. The other two songs, I'm Not You and Nursery Rhyhm, wouldn't get released until 2009. Golden Lies itself is an example, as it was originally the TitleTrack to the 2000 era group's debut.
* Necromandus' debut ''Orexis Of Death'', boasting production by [[Music/BlackSabbath Tony Iommi]], was recorded in 1973. The album was shelved when their lead guitarist left the group, only to eventually get an official release in 1999.
* [[https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20060901/cinders-house-rising-from-ashes A pretty tragic example]] happened to Florida based AlternativeMetal band Cinder. They were signed to Geffen Records, had an album all set and ready to be released in 2001 and were even touring to promote it. The problem? Geffen got bought out by Universal, which caused ''Break Your Silence'' to suffer continuous delays and eventually not be released (helps that while Cinder got some compensation from the label once they decided to terminate their contract, they did not want to buy the master tapes for $250,000). To add insult to injury, they DID end up releasing one song off the album called "Soul Creation" which ended up charting and having a fairly popular video. Almost two decades later in 2020 the entire album would finally be released digitally.
* Music/NineInchNails' long form music video for their EP ''Broken'' (called ''The Broken Movie'') was shelved as Trent Reznor didn't want the extreme graphic content overshadowing the music itself; the individual music videos aside from 'Gave Up' (which is apart of the plotline of the video's wraparound segments) were later made available on the second tape of the ''Closure'' video album. As for ''The Broken Movie'' itself, Reznor gave copies of the video to various friends, albiet with certain sections missing, with one copy in particular being circulated in bootleg form for years before a DVD-quality leak was uploaded to the internet (which Reznor implied to have done himself in a blogpost around the time). The movie was also briefly uploaded to NIN's official Platform/{{Vimeo}} account in both 2013 and 2014, but both times it was removed. In any case, the NIN website has a link to an Internet Archive backup of ''The Broken Movie''.
* Music/{{Can}}'s ''Delay 1968'' is so-called because it was recorded in 1968 and would have been their debut (going by the title ''Welcome to Thy Pnoom'') had it not been for the fact that no label had been willing to release it. Parts of it [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes ended up on bootlegs]], but it wasn't released in its entirety until 1981.
* The Music/FooFighters' tenth album ''Medicine at Midnight'' was supposed to kick off a celebration of the band's 25th anniversary. Then the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic hit, delaying the album for about a year.
* Music/DavidBowie:
** ''Music/{{Low|DavidBowieAlbum}}'' was completed in time for its planned release date of November 1976 but was put on hold by Creator/RCARecords thanks to its bleak, experimental sound. Not only were the label baffled by it, seeing it as unsuitable for the Christmas season and unsuccessfully pushing Bowie to record another ''Music/YoungAmericans'' instead, but ex-manager and partial rightsholder Tony Defries also attempted to block the record's release. It ultimately hit store shelves on January 14, 1977.
** In 2000, Bowie recorded ''Toy'', a collection of re-recorded tracks from early in his career (mostly the non-album singles put out before [[Music/DavidBowie1967 his first album]]) plus a few new songs. However, when he submitted the album to Creator/VirginRecords with the intent of releasing it in 2001, they put it on hold due to his planned surprise release being infeasible at the time before rejecting it outright due to it being seen as too uncommercial in the wake of various financial hardships the label was experiencing. It was eventually completed after Bowie's death and released in 2021.

* In October 2011, Music/{{MGMT}} had a pair of live performances (on the 10th and 11th) in the Guggenheim Museum, opening Maurizio Cattelan's ''All'' exhibit. The event involved a 45 minute performance of original music, and the only recordings available were bootlegs. An official live album of the event, ''11•11•11'', was finally released on the event's 11th anniversary.
* Music/DefLeppard recorded an iTunes session in 2006, but due to the same music rights issues that prevented most of their other albums from digital release, it wasn't released until 2018, fittingly titled ''The Lost Session''.
* Music/DanielAmos finished their third album ''Music/HorrendousDisc'' and had it completely ready to release in 1978--then their label Solid Rock Records just didn't release it. What's particularly strange is the publicity cycle for ''Horrendous Disc'' was already in full swing: DA had print ads in the relevant magazines, and were playing songs from the new album at their live shows. So fans were baffled and annoyed that they couldn't actually buy this much-touted album. On top of that, ''Horrendous Disc'' was a NewSoundAlbum (Beatles/ELO-ish pop rock, in contrast to the country rock from their first two albums), so its delay meant fans had no context for why DA sounded so different at their live shows. Following this debacle, DA left Solid Rock Records and recorded a followup album, ''¡Alarma!''--at which point Solid Rock finally relented and released ''Horrendous Disc'', so it hit store shelves mere weeks before ''¡Alarma!'' did. To this day, DA doesn't know why the album was delayed for so long.

* ''Wonderoos'' was a PreschoolShow that was supposed to debut on Creator/{{Netflix}} in November 2020, complete with a trailer. However, it was mysteriously shelved, and as of 2022, still has not seen the light of day for unknown reasons.

* Music/NineInchNails' long form music video for their EP ''Broken'' (called ''The Broken Movie'') was shelved as Trent Reznor didn't want the extreme graphic content overshadowing the music itself; the individual music videos aside from 'Gave Up' (which is apart of the plotline of the video's wraparound segments) were later made available on the second tape of the ''Closure'' video album. As for ''The Broken Movie'' itself, Reznor gave copies of the video to various friends, albiet with certain sections missing, with one copy in particular being circulated in bootleg form for years before a DVD-quality leak was uploaded to the internet (which Reznor implied to have done himself in a blogpost around the time). The movie was also briefly uploaded to NIN's official Vimeo account in both 2013 and 2014, but both times it was removed. In any case, the NIN website has a link to an Internet Archive backup of ''The Broken Movie''.

* ''It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown'' was finished in 1992 and was set to premiere on Creator/{{CBS}} during the late spring season, but the network ended up canceling the potential airing for unspecified reasons. This marked the first ''Franchise/{{Peanuts}}'' special not to air in prime-time. Subsequently, Paramount released the special on VHS in 1996 (on a double feature with ''Charlie Brown's All-Stars'') and it finally made its TV debut in 1998 on Creator/{{Nickelodeon}}.

* ''Series/{{Heathers}}'' was set to debut on the Creator/ParamountNetwork in 2018, but was shelved indefinitely after the February 2018 Florida school shooting (though some speculated that the actual reason for the delay was due to the negative reviews by critics who had previewed the show and that Paramount was only using the tragedy as a convenient excuse to delay the show) due to its BlackComedy take on socially progressive and liberal topics, teen bullying, violence, and murder. Paramount Network later burned off the series, heavily edited, over five nights beginning October 25, 2018, though the unedited versions did air overseas on HBO and were leaked to file-sharing sites months before the U.S. airings.

* In June 2013, Creator/BradJones announced his upcoming film ''Shot on Shitteo'', a NoBudget tribute to [[TheEighties 80's]] [[ExploitationFilm exploitation films]] made on VHS tapes. However, over the course of production in 2015, Jones discovered that the film's lead actor, Jake Norvell, was having an affair with Jones's girlfriend. When Norvell [[{{Jerkass}} pompously bragged about it]], Jones promptly fired him from the film, which became unreleaseable both due to Norvell's contract and the fact that about 5% of his scenes were not completed. Despite an attempt to resume production, which included a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0hIV9ohLyE teaser trailer]] promising a 2017 release, Jones later [[http://reallybradjones.tumblr.com/post/159578286694/speaking-of-shot-on-shitteo-has-that-came-out-yet announced]] that the film was no longer in active development and he had no plans one way or the other regarding its release. He has since referred to ''Shitteo'' as his personal ''Film/TheDayTheClownCried'', suggesting he's settled on never releasing it.

* ''VideoGame/TheRedStar'', a [=PS2=] shoot-'em-up based on the comic book of the same name (which was also scheduled for the UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}}, but never released), was finished in 2004, but was canceled when its original publisher (Creator/{{Acclaim}}) went out of business. It was later picked up by [=XS Games=] and released in 2007.
* ''The Dead of The Brain 1 & 2'', a UsefulNotes/PCEngine port of two {{visual novel}}s originally released for the UsefulNotes/PC98, was initially scheduled to be released in 1994, but shelved due to the declining support for the PC Engine in Japan. ''Dead of the Brain'' was eventually released in 1999 in limited quantities, more than two years after the previous PC Engine release (''Hataraku Shojo''), giving it the distinction of being the final official game for the system. It also came out a year after the final PC-FX game, which meant that the PC-Engine technically outlived its successor.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife1''[='s=] UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast port was cancelled because of the Dreamcast's diminishing sales in America, even though the port was completed. [=ISOs=] of the port have been leaked on the Internet, however, and what were to be exclusive addons to that version, ''[[VideoGame/HalfLifeBlueShift Blue Shift]]'' and the High-Definition Pack, were released for PC.
* ''VideoGame/RaymanLegends'' was set for a Spring 2013 release as a UsefulNotes/WiiU exclusive, but after the poor sales of the Wii U exclusive launch title ''VideoGame/ZombiU'', Ubisoft decided that it should be MultiPlatform instead. Instead of releasing the Wii U version for the Spring and the other versions for September, they released the Wii U version ''alongside'' the other versions in September.
* The UsefulNotes/NeoGeo game ''Zupapa'' was all set to be released in 1994, but publisher Face went bankrupt, delaying the game's release for seven years. Another unreleased Neo Geo game from the same year, Visco Games' ''Bang Bang Busters'', finally had an authorized release by Neo Conception International in 2011.[[note]]They also [[http://www.neogeoprotos.com/games/caribbean.htm remade]] another prototype Neo Geo game (''Treasure of the Caribbean''), but the original game has yet to be found.[[/note]]
* ''[[VideoGame/{{Putty}} Putty Squad]]'' was to have been released in 1994 first for the UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}} 1200, with versions for the SNES and other platforms to follow. The SNES version was the only one released (not counting playable demos), despite nine magazines giving the apparently finished Amiga 1200 version favorable reviews. After nearly two decades of rumors, System 3 [[http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/galahad-masters-amiga-putty-squad/ finally released the Amiga version]] at the end of 2013.
* ''Hostile Breed'', an ambitious BugWar game for the UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}, was finished and reviewed in several gaming magazines in mid-1992 shortly before its developer, Palace Software, went bankrupt. A copy of the full game was found in 2010 and released by Amiga Games That Weren't.

* ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'': Creator/{{Rare}} completed or almost completed an HD remaster for the UsefulNotes/{{Xbox Live Arcade}}, but [[ScrewedByTheLawyers intellectual property issues]] prevented them from releasing it. In 2021, a near-final build leaked onto the Internet, allowing people to see WhatCouldHaveBeen. Eventually, ''[=GoldenEye=]'' was released in January 2023 on Xbox Game Pass and for those with ''Rare Replay'' digital copies.
* Creator/{{Ubisoft}} currently has a UsefulNotes/WiiU-exclusive party game that they have already completed, but refuse to release, most likely owing to the complete failure of the Wii U in the marketplace; short of Ubisoft porting the game to the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch, it's unlikely that this game will ever see a release.
* ''Chantze's Stone'', a [=LaserDisc=]-based arcade game by Creator/DataEast that was scheduled to be released in 1985, but was shelved once the popularity of FMV-based games started dying off. When the genre saw a brief resurgence during the early [='90s=], once optical media started taking off as a home media, it saw a release on the [=LaserActive=] as ''Triad Stone'' and on the [[UsefulNotes/ThreeDOInteractiveMultiplayer 3DO]] and UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn ([[NoExportForYou with the latter version being exclusive to Japan]]) as ''Strahl''.

** ''VideoGame/{{Mother}}'': The English localization of the first game, titled ''Earth Bound'' (a title Nintendo later reused for ''[[VideoGame/EarthBound1994 Mother 2]]''), had a finished translation and marketing strategy, with a planned Fall 1991 release. The game never came out due to a variety of factors, namely the impending release of the Super NES. The localized prototype ROM would make its way online years later under the fan name ''[=EarthBound=] Zero'', with Nintendo officially releasing the game as ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' in 2015 through their UsefulNotes/VirtualConsole service.
** ''VideoGame/StarFox2'' was set for release in 1996, but was delayed and eventually cancelled due to the upcoming release of the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64. A near-finished prototype ROM from 1995 was leaked online in 1999, with the game finally getting an official release as part of the [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem SNES Classic]] plug-n'-play microconsole in 2017.

* ''VideoGame/RodeaTheSkySoldier'' was completed by developer Prope for the UsefulNotes/{{Wii}} in 2011, but publisher Kadokawa Games did not release it for over four years in order to create a UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS tie-in, which promptly entered DevelopmentHell. When it finally finished development in 2015, the UsefulNotes/WiiU had long since superseded the Wii, leading Kadokawa to port the ''3DS version'' to the Wii U, and leave Prope's original version only as a bonus feature for first-run copies.

* Creator/NickJr's ''Made By Maddie'' was initially slated to premiere in September 2020, but was later pulled from the schedule due to [[Main/OvershadowedByControversy allegations that it plagiarized]] ''WesternAnimation/HairLove''. Nearly a year later, in August 2021, it was revealed that Creator/{{Nickelodeon}}'s trademark for the series had expired. At this point, it's unknown if the series will ever see the light of day.

* The final season of ''WesternAnimation/LittleBill'' was completed in 2001 (hence the copyright date during the [[Creator/NickJr Nick Jr. Productions]] Main/VanityPlate at the end), but the final episode was withheld until ''February 2004''.

* After the release of ''[[VideoGame/DonPachi DoDonPachi DaiOuJou]]'' in Japan, Creator/{{CAVE}} developed an international version of the game titled ''[=DoDonPachi III=]'', which featured some of its gameplay and balance changes that would later be implemented into its [[UpdatedRerelease Black Label]] release. This version, while completed and hinted by Cave in the past, never saw the light of day outside of Japan officially for years and remained that way since, outside of a leaked ROM of the game in 2017, confirming its existence. It wasn't until 2023 when Creator/{{M2}} included ''[=DoDonPachi III=]'' as part of ''[=DoDonPachi=] [=DaiOuJou=] Re:incarnation'' alongside its original version and Black Label.

** The last five episodes of Season 1 were held over for two years, not releasing until Creator/AdultSwim obtained the rights to rerun the series in 2002.

* Even if they started dubbing season 4 in France in early 1993, none of it could air. The reason? Canal+ replacing the show with Rugrats in October 1992, the very week after season 3 finished airing. The episodes were finally shown beginning on September 4, 1993, but they likely weren't in the timeslot ''The Simpsons'' used from 1990 to it's unfortunate cancellation in France in October 1992.

** The songs of ''Chrome Dreams'' were recorded from 1974 to 1977. Bootlegs of the album circulated in the 1990's. A sequel to the album was released in 2007 before the original was finally released in 2023.