Seinfeld had many signature running gags, from a snarling “Hello, Newman!” to answering the phone with “Who is this?,” but one of the subtler ones was all the fictional movies that the characters would mention. They mention real ones, like The English Patient, but the overwhelming majority are made-up. Some of these fictional movies were just mentioned in passing, but others became running gags as we saw the characters go to theater to see them, then rent them on home video, then catch them on TV, then date the lead’s understudy for a Broadway musical adaptation over the course of multiple seasons.
So, here are 10 fake movies from Seinfeld that should actually get made.
Firestorm
In the season 7 premiere “The Engagement,” George gets engaged to Susan. The scene that demonstrates what a mistake this was has Jerry picking up George to see a new action thriller starring Harrison Ford called Firestorm and George telling Jerry that he’s instead going with Susan to see a melodrama starring Sally Field called The Muted Heart. Later, we see Jerry and a fellow moviegoer exiting the screen, talking about how awesome the movie was.
Apparently, it included such set pieces as an underwater escape, a helicopter landing on a car, and Ford jumping out of a plane and shooting back at the plane as he fell.
Chunnel
Chunnel is an action thriller in which there’s an explosion in the Chunnel (the tunnel connecting the UK and France) and the U.S. President’s daughter has become trapped inside. This would actually make a great installment in Gerard Butler’s Has Fallen series: Chunnel Has Fallen!
The plot of this one proved to be so convoluted that Jerry and Elaine couldn’t follow it, and their persistent questions annoyed Susan so much that she decided not to be their friend anymore. Just because Jerry and Elaine don’t pay attention to movies, this doesn’t mean it’s a negative mark on the movie. Complex plotting is great!
Ponce de Leon
Larry David himself reportedly wrote a script based on the life of explorer Ponce de Leon once. Ponce de Leon is famous for his search for the Fountain of Youth. In Seinfeld, George describes watching a movie called Ponce de Leon that dramatized this quest. There was apparently a scene at the end where Ponce and his crew actually found the fabled Fountain of Youth. So, they jumped in and started splashing around in it.
Then, Ponce got out of the water and went to find a mirror, only to face the heartbreaking discovery that he hadn’t changed. This scene made George Costanza, lord of all things evil and duplicitous, shed a tear.
Blimp: The Hindenburg Story
This one should get made if only so Seinfeld fans can yell out, “That’s gotta hurt!” when the Hindenburg goes down. They’d just have to hope that no one brought “one of those funny laser pointers” to the theater to upstage them. In all seriousness, a movie about the Hindenburg disaster would be a lucrative opportunity for Hollywood.
It has the historical grounding to make it a contender at the Oscars, but the big-budget spectacle of a disaster movie to make it appeal to mainstream audiences. It could be the new Titanic – tack on a love story before the Hindenburg goes down and you’ve got a movie.
Sack Lunch
This fake Seinfeld movie title is actually being used by Marvel Studios right now as the fake working title for their upcoming film about the Eternals. It’s the movie that Elaine wants to see instead of The English Patient, which everyone is raving about, but she finds to be overrated.
All we see of this movie is its poster, which sees a family popping out of a brown paper bag, suggesting it’s some kind of family comedy, but that’s enough to hook Elaine. She can’t tell if the family is in a giant paper bag or they’ve been shrunk down to fit in a regular-sized bag.
Cry, Cry Again
Described by Kramer’s volatile friend Brody as “an arty movie,” Cry, Cry Again is one of the movies that Jerry was forced to bootleg (well, he only had to be forced to do it until he got a taste for it and gained some artistic vision). It appears to be set in Paris, with a lot of symbolic imagery, like a loaf of bread that represents a man’s soul.
Anyone who makes this movie should leave in the shockingly bad moves of the “lone dancer” who appears at the end, because as Jerry explained, it ties in thematically with the title of the film: “So, you cry, and then when you see the dancing, you cry again.”
Checkmate
This historical drama about a king who likes chess might also be about a conspiracy. We only hear the dialogue from one scene of this movie, but it’s enough to hook us in for a two-hour runtime. It sees a servant, voiced by Larry David, asking a king, voiced by Jerry Seinfeld, why he plays chess, “because the king is always in jeopardy.” The king says, “Yes, but it’s only a game!” and the servant suspiciously adds, “Yes, of course...only a game.”
Clearly, this will start off as a movie about chess, but it will build into an epic uprising against a tyrannical king – the cinematic equivalent of a well-played game of chess.
Prognosis Negative
The movie that Jerry tries and fails to see throughout the whole of the infamous season 3 episode “The Dog” is called Prognosis Negative. In the show, it seems to be framed as a medical thriller, but the title is, in fact, taken from a screenplay for a comedy that series co-creator Larry David wrote in the 1980s. In an interview with NPR, David described the unproduced gem. Its lead character was “a single guy who is unable to commit to a relationship,” and the plot went like this: “He finds out an ex-girlfriend has six months to live and decides it’s perfect – he can commit without worrying about the long-term consequences.”
It was actually through this script that David met Robert B. Weide, the guy who would go on to direct the mockumentary that became Curb Your Enthusiam, as well as many of the series’ episodes.
Death Blow
Jerry was able to get tickets to an advance screening of this action-packed blockbuster and he ended up being forced at gunpoint to bootleg it. After having to leave the movie early, Kramer speculated on which character would be dealt “the final death blow.” He felt that one Hawaiian man “really had it comin’.”
When he was stealing business from Moviefone, Kramer recited the poster tagline for Death Blow: “When someone tries to blow you up, not because of who you are, but because of different reasons altogether!” That sounds even more high-concept and convoluted than the Two Brothers movie from Rick and Morty’s multiverse – but it also sounds like an awesome cinematic ride.
Rochelle, Rochelle
In the Seinfeld universe, this little erotic indie darling turned out to be so popular – for reasons that are made obvious by the guys’ obsession with the movie – that it was adapted into a Broadway musical starring Bette Midler. As any Seinfeld fan will be able to recite, word for word, Rochelle, Rochelle is about “a young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.”
According to George, it’s “a foreign movie...a film is what it is.” This is easily the most well-known fake movie from Seinfeld lore and any fan of the show would kill to see it in all its glory on the big screen.