A compulsively readable journey into the area of film-making where all writers, directors and stars fear to tread: Development Hell, the place where scripts are written, actors hired and sets designed... but the films rarely actually get made! Whatever happened to Batman versus Superman? Why have there been so many scripts written over the years for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's still in development Indiana Jones 4? Why was Lara Croft's journey to the big screen so tortuous, and what prevented Paul Verhoeven from filming what he calls "one of the greatest scripts ever written"? Why did Ridley Scott's Crisis in the Hot Zone collapse days away from filming, and were the Beatles really set to star in Lord of the Rings? All these lost projects, and more, are covered in this major new book, which features many exclusive new interviews with the writers and directors involved.

Development Hell: The NXT Story, penned by former Power Slam scribe and WhatCulture.com's own Michael Sidgwick, chronicles the history of WWE's NXT brand. NXT has drew universal critical acclaim for its fan service fusion of old-school booking philosophies and progressive body of in-ring work - but the road to critical acclaim was arduous. When WWE destroyed its territorial and mainstream competition, the monolith had also annihilated the talent pool. Replenishing it was an unenviable task made all the more difficult by a blasé and counterproductive attitude and a curiously myopic direction. All of which is documented in a book covering the inauspicious beginnings of the dusty Stamford Farm warehouse and the murmurings of Memphis Power Pro, the halcyon days of Ohio Valley Wrestling, the infamous disaster of Deep South Wrestling and the literal lunacy that was Florida Championship Wrestling. The roots of the triumph that was NXT were toxic...

A Journey to Hell, Heaven, and Back In 1978, Ivan Tuttle was living a carefree life, going from one party to the next, from one high to anotherwhen his fun, free life was interrupted by a pain in his leg. Doctors told him he had a dangerous blood clot in his legbut Ivan didnt pay much attention to that. He was 26 and felt fine; blood clots were a problem for his grandfather, not him. Until the clock ran out. Ivan Tuttle suddenly found himself dragged down to hell for a horrifying lesson in the reality of eternity. He was spared and even saw Heaven before being sent back to earth with quite a story to tell.

A riveting portrait of a rural Pennsylvania town at the center of the fracking controversy Shale gas extraction—commonly known as fracking—is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet—whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet—is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent. The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend "up to heaven and down to hell," which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates to petroleum companies. Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living with rural communities outside of Williamsport as they confronted the tension between property rights and the commonwealth. In this deeply intimate book, he reveals how the decision to lease brings financial rewards but can also cause irreparable harm to neighbors, to communal resources like air and water, and even to oneself. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell casts America’s ideas about freedom and property rights in a troubling new light, revealing how your personal choices can undermine your neighbors’ liberty, and how the exercise of individual rights can bring unintended environmental consequences for us all.

For over 125 years, the Daily Tar Heel has chronicled life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at times pushed and prodded the university community on issues of local, state, and national significance. Thousands of students have served on its staff, many of whom have gone on to prominent careers in journalism and other influential fields. Print News and Raise Hell engagingly narrates the story of the newspaper's development and the contributions of many of the people associated with it. Kenneth Joel Zogry shows how the paper has wrestled over the years with challenges to academic freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, while confronting issues such as the evolution of race, gender, and sexual equality on campus and long-standing concerns about the role of major athletics at an institution of higher learning. The story of the paper, the social media platform of its day, uncovers many dramatic but perhaps forgotten events at UNC since the late nineteenth century, and along with many photographs and cartoons not published for decades, opens a fascinating window into Tar Heel history. Examining how the campus and the paper have dealt with many challenging issues for more than a century, Zogry reveals the ways in which the history of the Daily Tar Heel is deeply intertwined with the past and present of the nation's oldest public university.

A study of how China’s changing economy may leave its rural communities in the dust and launch a political and economic disaster. As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the workers who have fueled the country’s rise come from rural villages and have never been to high school. While this national growth strategy has been effective for three decades, the unskilled wage rate is finally rising, inducing companies inside China to automate at an unprecedented rate and triggering an exodus of companies seeking cheaper labor in other countries. Ten years ago, almost every product for sale in an American Walmart was made in China. Today, that is no longer the case. With the changing demand for labor, China seems to have no good back-up plan. For all of its investment in physical infrastructure, for decades China failed to invest enough in its people. Recent progress may come too late. Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle and Hell reveal that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. Over half of China’s population—as well as a vast majority of its children—are from rural areas. Their low levels of basic education may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere. In Invisible China, Rozelle and Hell speak not only to an urgent humanitarian concern but also a potential economic crisis that could upend economies and foreign relations around the globe. If too many are left structurally unemployable, the implications both inside and outside of China could be serious. Understanding the situation in China today is essential if we are to avoid a potential crisis of international proportions. This book is an urgent and timely call to action that should be read by economists, policymakers, the business community, and general readers alike. Praise for Invisible China “Stunningly researched.” —TheEconomist, Best Books of the Year (UK) “Invisible China sounds a wake-up call.” —The Strategist “Not to be missed.” —Times Literary Supplement (UK) “[Invisible China] provides an extensive coverage of problems for China in the sphere of human capital development . . . the book is rich in content and is not constrained only to China, but provides important parallels with past and present developments in other countries.” —Journal of Chinese Political Science

An immersive photographic tour of the legendary Hotel Chelsea, whose residents share their spaces, their stories, and a delirious collective history of this landmark. Jackson Pollock, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Arthur C. Clarke, Andy Warhol, William S. Burroughs, Janis Joplin, Eugene O'Neill, Rufus Wainwright, Betsey Johnson, R. Crumb, Thomas Wolfe, Jasper Johns—these are just a few of the figures who at one time occupied one of the most alluring and storied residences ever: the Chelsea Hotel. Born during the Gilded Age and once the tallest building in New York, the twelve-story landmark has long been a magnet for artists, writers, musicians, and cultural provocateurs of all stripes. In this book, photographer Colin Miller and writer Ray Mock intimately portray the enduring bohemian spirit of the Chelsea Hotel through interviews with nearly two dozen current residents and richly detailed photographs of their unique spaces. As documented in Miller's abundant photographs, these apartments project the quirky decorating sensibilities of urban aesthetes who largely work in film, theater, and the visual arts, resulting in deliriously ornamental spaces with a kitschy edge. Weathering the overall homogenization of New York and the rapid transformation of the hotel itself—amid recent ownership changeovers and tenant lawsuits—residents remain in about seventy apartments while the rest of the units are converted to rentals (and revert to a hotel-stay basis, which had ceased in 2011). For the community of artists and intellectuals who remain, the uncertain status of the hotel is just another stage in a roller-coaster history. A fascinating portrait of a strand of resilient bohemian New Yorkers and their creative, deeply idiosyncratic homes, Hotel Chelsea is a rich visual and narrative document of a cultural destination as complicated as it is mythical.