Trilogy of Death

The Trilogy of Death was a planned film trilogy set to be directed by Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. It was to act as a companion piece to his previous Trilogy of Life [which included The Decameron (Italian: Il Decameron), The Canterbury Tales (I racconti di Cantebury, and Arabian Nights (Il fiore delle mille e una notte, lit. The Flower of One Thousand and One Nights). However, only one movie would come out of the trilogy, being the infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom(Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma), which premiered in Paris on 3 November 1975.

Plot
The first film in the trilogy, Salò, is a loose adaptation of the unfinished 1785 novel The 120 Days of Sodom (French: Les 120 Journées de Sodome) by Marquis de Sade. It is updated to instead take place in Fascist Italy in 1944. A group of 4 people, the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate, and the President, recruit a group of 16 boys and girls to exploit and torture to death. It is structured in 4 parts, drawing inspiration from Dante's The Divine Comedy.

The second film was set to be a biopic of Gilles de Rais, a knight and lord in medieval France, who was a known child killer. For his crimes, he was executed on 26 October 1440.

Why It Was Cancelled

 * 1) The gruesome content of Salò led to the film being banned in numerous countries. For example, in Australia, the film was banned in Australia as well until it was released on DVD & Blu-ray in 2015. However, this was only on the condition that the special features provided context to give the film merit.
 * 2) Director Pier Pasolini was assassinated 3 weeks before the premiere of Salò by being run over with his own car. It was speculated that this was because of the graphic content of the movie, though this was actually because of his political leanings.

Results

 * Only Salò, the first film, would ever see the light of day.
 * Said film would spark plenty of controversy with its graphic content. As stated, it was banned in various countries, though many bans would later be lifted.
 * Again, the Gilles de Rais biopic was cancelled, as was the third film, which was still merely an idea at the time.