Mondo Posters That Never Happened: Spring Breakers, Planet Of The Apes, The Godfather And More

Little known fact: Mondo rejects just as many, if not more, posters than they actually release. Some are posters that didn't get approved by a star or studio. Others are different versions of a poster that actually was released. And sometimes Mondo and a company can't settle on a design and it never sees the light of day.

At MondoCon this past weekend, Justin Ishmael, Rob Jones and Mitch Putnam, the creative team behind Mondo, presented a panel called Mondo Talk about this very subject. However, what started as a way for fans to see the behind the scenes creation of a poster turned into, as Ishmael put it, "The depressing, what you could have had panel."

They revealed a non-stop cavalcade of posters, concepts, licenses and more they tried to realize, but which failed for one reason for another. We're talking Tyler Stout's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Krzysztof Domaradzki's officially licensed The Godfather, Spring Breakers, and various different iterations of Man of Steel. Below, check out a bunch of posters Mondo posters that never happened.

A few years ago, Mondo did posters for all the Planet of the Apes movies. Fan favorite Tyler Stout was tasked with doing Conquest but was told Mondo didn't have likeness rights. He used them anyway and, even with them, said he hated the poster. They decided to let Phantom City Creative do it.

Mondo had acquired The Godfather license from Paramount with the likeness rights only for Marlon Brando. They hired Krzysztof Domaradzki to do the piece and everyone loved it, except the Brando estate. They didn't get the duality concept, thought the actor looked too old in the poster and wouldn't let Mondo print it.

The Mondo team really wanted to do a poster for Spring Breakers but knew it was going to be hard not to make it look like some kind of party movie. They asked Tyler Stout to do one, he said no, and finally Jay Shaw created a poster (left, above) they felt had some party vibe, but also lots of the creepy subtext in the film. They studio rejected it, saying it looked too much like other things they were doing. After numerous other attempts, no one could ever come to an agreement.

Phanton City Creative did release a Mondo poster for The Exorcist in 2012 but it wasn't his initial idea. Though they had full permission from Warner Bros. to do anything, Mondo wanted to get William Friedken's stamp of approval. After seeing the above piece, he sent a scathing email saying it was too literal and obvious. The image they ended up with was less so. See it here.

Ken Taylor's Man of Steel poster started as the image above left. A destroyed Metropolis with a tiny Superman at the top. Mondo felt it looked like he was taking credit for the destruction and they pushed him another way. They went with the young Clark in a cape but had to go through numerous iterations (the boy looked too old, too short, too weird, etc) before landing on the final.

Spike Jonze consulted directly with Mondo for the poster to Her. He didn't want something "too literal" or "content releveant" to the film. So early iterations, like the ones above with the main character, were out. Eventually, Jonze himself suggested the plane statue and that's what happened.

Seth MacFarlane rejected this Ted poster by Little Friends of Print Making (regular on the left, variant on the right) because he didn't think it was funny enough. They also think it might've been become it was part of the Oscar series, which the studios take very seriously.

The recent Goonies poster by James Flames started like a more traditional movie poster, such as the ones above. But the Mondo team wanted to go against that, and instead focused on the more subtle elements, specifically the image of the kids riding the bikes in the bottom left. A few iterations later, they had a final piece.

Mondo made a ton of posters with the Prometheus license, but this one never quite made it. The studio felt Craig Drake's take was so close to the work of Patrick Nagel, they might get sued. Mondo felt that was odd because, obviously, Nagel was just an influence on Drake. Maybe it was the red accent, which suggested an abortion to some? They changed the entire poster to blue. Still no dice and the poster got canned.

For his recent Mondo Gallery show, Kevin Tong did a poster of Galactus, full frame, and a teeny tiny Silver Surfer flying away. Above you can see some of the details from the top of the poster. Marvel straight up rejected it. No reason. They just said no to anything Fantastic Four in general.