Altman worked for some time on a screen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's famed novel that was to have been produced by Dino De Laurentiis. Several decades later (1999), another director -- an Altman associate -- made the film.

Robert Altman was due to direct this project about a truck contest in small town Texas, but died before filming began.

Altman planned to direct a screenplay by Jeffrey Lewis, about New York's art scene, to star Salma Hayek and James Franco. Production was scheduled for 2003, but the film was never made.

Had worked on adapting the book and screenplay but, through a business deal, he lost out on directing what became one of the defining movies of the 'Sixties.

Altman was originally scheduled to film version of E.L. Doctorow's great novel.