For every Wayne’s World, there was another movie based on a Saturday Night Live sketch that never got made at all.

Hans & Franz: The Girly-Man Dilemma

One of the show’s most popular recurring bits in the late 1980s was “Hans and Franz,” the Eastern European bodybuilders portrayed by Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon who wanted to “pump you up.” In 1993, production was underway for a movie about Hans and Franz traveling to Hollywood to be movie stars like their idol, bodybuilder turned movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh, and it was a musical. Oh, and Schwarzenegger was supposed to co-star as himself. The movie fell apart when Last Action Hero, a similarly fourth-wall-busting movie starring Schwarzenegger as himself, bombed at the box office.

Superfans

The “Superfans” are perhaps better known as “Da Bears guys,” a bunch of beer-swilling Chicago sports fans with Chicago accents. SNL writer Robert Smigel played one of the group (along with Chris Farley, Mike Myers, and guest host George Wendt) and wrote a bizarre screenplay based on the sketch. In it, a businessman (to be played by Martin Short) buys the Chicago Bears’ Soldier Field and turns it into a luxury stadium for the rich, shutting out the team’s working-class fans, like the Superfans. It was set to be made in 1995, until SNL was nearly cancelled after the show’s ratings sank and other SNL movies tanked in theaters. NBC forced SNL to focus on the show, and cut out the movies.

Dieter

The surprise success of SNL alum Mike Myers’ Austin Powers in 1997 allowed him to make a movie based on a very weird character he’d developed on TV: Dieter, the artsy, all-black-wearing German who hosted a talk show called Sprockets (along with his pet monkey, Klaus). The script was written by Meyers and “Deep Thoughts” scribe Jack Handey, and followed Dieter as he traveled across the U.S. in search of the kidnapped Klaus. But just as production began, Myers cancelled the film because he didn’t like the script (the one he co-wrote). The film’s producers, Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment, sued Myers for breach of contract, a matter that was resolved with Myers agreeing to star in 2003’s The Cat in the Hat. Dieter, however, was never made.