1. Thomas Paine biopic. Richard Attenborough has been trying to make it for years. You'd have the broad canvas of the American Revolution where you juxtapose intellectual ideas about how to set up a new country upon Enlightenment principals against the War of Independence. All the founding fathers would be there.
But that's only first act. Because then Paine goes to Georgian London to participate in the Industrial Revolution. Then he flees to Paris to participate in the French Revolution and witnesses all the jockeying for power among all the factions. Everything is up for grabs. Pertinent parables to today's issues of inequality and the 1% v 99%.
Paine's thrown in jail. Napoleon comes to power, etc. It'd encompass all the grand ideas (abolition of slavery, secularism, social security, democracy, libertarianism, republicanism, egalitarianism, etc) and massive battles on land and sea, with a cast of hundreds (who's who of 18th century European/American politics). It'd cost $250M+, go on for hours, and probably make no money because it doesn't have teenage superheroes.
2. DUNE. I second that.
3. Captain Cook biopic. There's yet to be a major movie on any real voyage of exploration, and no one did it better than Cook (and he had a suitably dramatic death). Give it the Master & Commander treatment in terms of production values. Recently, Life of Pi and Kon-Tiki showed how to make seafaring cinematic. You could even have the obligatory "And then sharks" sequence. Even more action-packed than Cook is the voyage of Anson in the 1740s which involved multiple shipwrecks, the loss of hundreds of lives, pirating & plundering, mutiny, struggle for survival, exotic cultures, international warfare, etc.
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