Development hell: History and Key Facts

Development hell, also known as development purgatory or development limbo, is media and software industry jargon for a project that remains in a stage of early development for a long time because of legal, technical, or artistic challenges. A work may move between many sets of artistic leadership, crews, scripts, game engines, or studios.

Some projects enter development hell because they were initially designed with ambitious goals but the difficulty of meeting those goals was underestimated, and attempts to meet those goals have repeatedly failed. Many projects that enter development hell are gradually abandoned by the involved parties and are never produced.

The term is also applied more generally to describe any project that has unexpectedly stalled in the planning or design phase, has failed to meet its originally expected date of completion, and is languishing in those phases for what is seen as an unreasonably long time. The related terms production hell and production limbo refer to situations in which a film has begun production but has remained unfinished for a long time without progressing to post-production.

Source and attribution

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