Movies That Were So Bad They Had To Cancel The Sequel

No one has higher hopes than the studio when it comes to a movie's franchise potential. After putting countless hours and alarming amounts of money into production, success is inevitable, right? If the studio senses that a feature could be the start of something major, they might even greenlight a follow-up before the film even hits theaters. Sadly, not every major motion picture does well at the box office, and in some cases, entire film franchises have been canceled after poor box office returns from a single film.

In a world full of larger-than-life cinematic universes that continue to pop up around us, it's easy to think that Hollywood is just a giant success machine that keeps churning out profit-making content. However, there are plenty of big-name productions—many of which you probably know—that fail to perform to their highest potential and end up causing plenty of destruction in their wake. That's admittedly pretty dramatic, but this is the arts; everything's about the drama here.

Regardless of the big-name stars, directors, or studios attached, not every Hollywood feature is a home run. These are some of Hollywood's greatest failures in their attempts to launch a series of films, or an entire franchise, based on one motion picture.

Before Sony even released their second installment of "The Amazing Spider-Man" story, both the third and fourth films were announced in 2013. With creatives Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Jeff Pinkner set to reunite with director Marc Webb—a man perfectly named to helm a "Spider-Man" franchise—to expand Peter Parker's story, they aimed to expand the greater "Amazing Spider-Man" universe as well. Soon, "Venom," "Sinister Six," and other Spidey-themed projects were thrust into development as Sony set their eyes on building a Marvel universe of their own to rival Disney's growing Marvel Cinematic Universe. After an underwhelming performance by "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," Sony made a deal with Marvel Studios, granting the studio the usage of the Spider-Man character, albeit a de-aged and rebooted version. 

This new Spider-Man—now played by Tom Holland instead of Andrew Garfield—appeared first in "Captain America: Civil War" before starring in his own Marvel Studios/Sony co-production "Spider-Man: Homecoming." From there, Holland's Peter Parker starred in his own film trilogy aside from working alongside "The Avengers." Though "The Amazing Spider-Man" universe didn't happen, "Venom" was made anyhow and Garfield's Spider-Man (and his foes) returned for "Spider-Man: No Way Home," where the character's story was rounded out, leaving many hopeful that we'll see this version of the wall-crawler again.

Even the Veronica Roth faithful were turned off by the third installment of the "Divergent" book series. The trilogy closer received grimmer reviews than its predecessors from readers who were disappointed at its hectic conclusion. So when Lionsgate announced they'd be dividing the final adaptation installment into two films, the collective eye-rolling among "Divergent" fans was intense. The first two "Divergent" installments weren't built for critics, so it didn't matter that they received little praise or prestige; they still earned enough money to justify carrying on with the franchise, so "Allegiant" was greenlit. 

However, the third film was an unmitigated disaster on all fronts, earning laughingstock status with critics and barely bringing in half of what "Insurgent" did at the box office. The production budget on the would-be final installment, "Ascendant," was immediately slashed, the director jumped ship, and after the studio revealed they'd turn to television to produce the final chapter, several cast members bowed out. Several months after its originally slated release date for "Ascendant" passed by, Lionsgate announced a new plan to develop "Divergent's" final leg as a TV series with Starz, but without its original initiates onboard to finish the dystopian saga, it hardly qualifies as a true sequel.

Based on the Steven Gould novels, "Jumper" was a sci-fi extravaganza that was clearly supposed to do more. With a promising young cast, an open ending, and a frenetic story that could easily be continued in new adventures, it had "franchise hopeful" written all over it. Despite a tepid box office take and terrible reviews, lead actor Hayden Christensen claimed sequel plans were still in development with the studio even two years after its release (via MTV). According to the "Star Wars" prequel star, the sequel would've followed its heroes to a darker place; leap forward a decade, though, and 20th Century Fox is officially out of the "Jumper" movie business.

Director Doug Liman has since managed to transport the property to another locale for a reboot-slash-sequel produced by YouTube Red. However, instead of continuing with Christensen's character's journey, as told in the second book "Reflex," the new series, titled "Impulse," focuses on the third novel in the series, which highlights the adventures of his eventual daughter—though the series departs from this concept. Though there are loose connections between the 2008 film and the YouTube Red series, they're largely separate entities. "Impulse" was canceled after its second season in 2020. While "Jumper" might have built a launchpad for other projects, whatever plans were percolating for "Jumper 2" have ultimately failed to clear the hurdle.

Following underwhelming returns for "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," Fox put Marvel's first family on the back burner for a while—that is, until the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After Marvel Studios gained some traction, and Fox successfully soft-rebooted the "X-Men" series, it was time to revive the "Fantastic Four." In response, the studio tried to follow Marvel's cinematic universe concept and expand its own comic-based collection with a 2015 reboot, though things didn't go exactly as planned. Rather than striking radioactive gold, the studio learned the hard way that superheroes are a more hands-on business than they'd originally thought.

It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, especially since they boasted a quartet of critically favored actors—including Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Jamie Bell, and Kate Mara—but critics and audiences overwhelmingly hated it. To add insult to injury, the box office results were terrible too, leaving Fox's newly minted FF in a rough spot. A sequel was originally slated for 2017, but after some serious reconsideration—and Fox selling to Disney—Marvel's first family of superheroes is set to be rebooted and restored by Marvel Studios in an upcoming feature film. John Krasinski even played an alternate universe version of Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic in 2022's "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," further teasing their return to the big screen.

While many of the movies on this list are admittedly pretty bad, Disney's "John Carter" gets a bad rap. Now, there's no denying that Disney's attempt at a science-fiction epic was a box office bomb. It actually bombed so hard that its title is now often used as an adjective to describe a grossly underperforming picture. Nevertheless, the movie has since been looked back on fondly by audiences and critics alike, even if the initial reception was moderate at best. Despite its critical reconsideration, all that epic sci-fi spectacle and Taylor Kitsch's good looks couldn't make up for what "John Carter" ultimately lost.

What really destroyed the would-be franchise was how much of a loss the studio took on its lack of ticket sales. The film reportedly cost a whopping $250 million to make—not counting its marketing expenses—and earned just $73 million in North America and $284 million worldwide. Ouch. Who is to blame for "John Carter's" massive failure? Apparently, it was an issue of marketing. With words like "Mars" and "Princess" axed from the title to avoid gendering the production, nobody understood what the 2012 feature was trying to be. The lack of care given to this Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation (yes, the same man behind "Tarzan") was what ultimately did Carter and crew in, and all future sequels were unceremoniously canceled.

Although Ryan Reynolds has since proven his worth on the superhero market by way of "Deadpool," his turn as Hal Jordan/The Green Lantern was a franchise nonstarter and remains something of a pockmark on his filmography. After years of attempting to get a superhero other than Batman or Superman off the ground, DC Comics and Warner Brothers turned to Green Lantern, a popular hero from the comics whose epic space adventures could masterfully translate to the screen—at least, that's what everybody hoped. Sadly, the movie felt more like a half-hearted attempt to start a larger cinematic universe a la "Iron Man" rather than a faithful adaptation of the Green Lantern mythos, even if the effects were pretty cool.

"Green Lantern" was quickly crushed by critics and tanked at the box office. The film's poor reception didn't just hurt potential sequels but also damaged anything labeled "Green Lantern" at the time, including the film's more successful animated counterpart, "Green Lantern: The Animated Series," which was canceled after the film's toy sales didn't improve. Soon after its 2011 release, plans for "Green Lantern 2" came to a crashing halt and the green light was extinguished. Since then, Warner Brothers has tried to kickstart a plethora of "Green Lantern" projects, with the upcoming "Lanterns" series set to reboot the series and integrate the character into the greater DC Universe.

"Red," a tongue-in-cheek action thriller about a group of retired CIA operatives brought back into action by an old foe, was just kooky and action-packed enough to hit the right tone with critics and make a nice mint at the box office. Encouraged by its all-star cast—which boasted Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, and Morgan Freeman, among others—and warm reception, the studio was quick to greenlight "Red 2" and began working on a script for "Red 3" shortly before the first sequel's release. It seemed like a no-brainer, after all.

But "Red 2" was a letdown for the studio, scorned by reviewers and skipped by moviegoers, and making more headlines for Willis' awkward promotional interviews than anything. Though the third installment was poised to go into production just months after "Red 2's" release, "Red 3" was never greenlit. Instead, series screenwriting duo Jon and Erich Hoeber took their story to NBC in the hopes of launching a TV series. When that failed to pan out, Deadline reported that Lionsgate decided to instead reboot the "Red" series for the Indian market, effectively scrapping its plans for another follow-up to the surprise hit. It's been crickets ever since.

Meant to be a "love letter" to the original Christopher Reeve-led "Superman" films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, "Superman Returns" sadly fell a bit short. Helmed by director Bryan Singer, who jumped ship on "X-Men: The Last Stand" in order to tackle Superman's big-screen return, "Superman Returns" did not meet the initial expectations of anybody involved. Not only did the film fail to bring in the box office receipts that the studio was hoping for but the film was also criticized for being too similar to the originals. Many viewers apparently wanted a 21st-century Superman to engage in some superheroic combat. While "Superman Returns" has been viewed more favorably in recent years, the initial reception killed any plans of an immediate sequel.

Ironically, "Man of Steel" star Henry Cavill was up for the leading role in what would've been McG's "Superman: Flyby" but ultimately became Singer's "Superman Returns." That loss ultimately turned out to be a win for him, because later got to suit up as Kal-El anyway in Zack Snyder's three-part DC Universe reimagining and avoided the critical drubbing that greeted this misguided "sequelboot." Over a decade later, Superman actor Brandon Routh donned the cape once more, this time on the small screen, for the Arrowverse's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" event. According to SlashFilm, DC Comics' CCO Jim Lee was instrumental in Routh's television return as Superman, which plays more like an epilogue for "Superman Returns."

It took more than two decades for the first sequel to 1982's cult film "Tron" to come down the pike, and it looks like it might take just as long for the next one. Though "Tron: Legacy" itself is actually a pretty good movie, its domestic box office numbers were mostly a bust. After Disney had put a lot of money into this "Tron" sequel—and even aired "Tron: Uprising," an animated series bridge between the two films—they decided that it just wasn't enough to warrant another venture into the Grid. Despite some formidable fan efforts to rescue plans for Joseph Kosinski's "Tron 3" from the dustbin, Disney "cryogenically froze" the project for a time. 

In an interview with the Happy Sad Confused Podcast in 2018, actor Garrett Hedlund attributed a lack of a sequel to another Disney failure. "The next 'TRON' was supposed to start—we were greenlit and ready to go—and then [Disney] had troubles with how 'Tomorrowland' did," he said. Whether the failure of "Tomorrowland," another ambitious Disney science-fiction flick that didn't do so hot, actually contributed to "Tron 3's" initial cancellation is unclear. These troubles didn't stall the series forever. In 2023, Deadline reported that Disney director Joachim Rønning is set to begin production on the upcoming "Tron: Ares," a sequel to "Legacy" which will star Jared Leto, as early as August 2023. Thankfully, the Grid seems to be back online.

The early 2000s were filled with plenty of fantasy adaptations. Some were good, like "The Lord of the Rings" and the first installment of "The Chronicles of Narnia"; others were bad, like "Eragon." Taking the beloved novel by Christopher Paolini and turning it into a "wooden" and "lifeless" Hollywood blockbuster was the last straw for fans of "The Inheritance Cycle." The overwhelmingly negative reviews sealed the fate of this fantasy series before it was given the chance to soar, and the planned "Eragon" sequels were quickly canceled. Fans of Paolini's original novels hoped for more faithful adaptations in the future, and after years of waiting, they're about to get their wish.

While the sequels to "Eragon" were never made, Variety reported in 2022 that a Disney+ streaming series based on "The Inheritance Cycle" is in development, with Paolini co-writing. "This has been a long time coming," Paolini noted on his Twitter, thanking the fans who supported him throughout the entire process and helped encourage Disney to give his fantasy epics the greenlight. With their "Eragon" and "Percy Jackson" reboot plans afoot, it seems like Disney is attempting to build a larger fantasy library of their own.

No remake was arguably more unnecessary than Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes," and the end result speaks for itself. A darker, Burton-ish fantasy version of the original science-fiction classic, the 2001 "Planet of the Apes" follows most of the same beats as the original: a human astronaut ends up on a strange planet where apes have evolved and humans are the slaves, only to find out that said planet is actually Earth. While the cliffhanger ending is a bit different than the original's, even the questions we had weren't pressing enough to warrant a sequel.

Despite the film's box office success, the critical disdain for Burton's "Planet of the Apes" and a lack of interest from the director himself closed the book on this short-lived venture. Instead, the franchise pivoted entirely, rebooting through a series of prequels that chronicled the Apes' rise as Earth's dominant species. From 2011's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" onward, the franchise has developed into something more interesting than anything Burton's reboot ever did. With another sequel on the way, the 2001 reboot has been long forgotten by the franchise.

Perhaps no comic book movie so badly damaged a franchise as Joel Schumacher's "Batman & Robin." Despite the stellar cast, the veteran director, and the backing of Warner Brothers, the fourth "Batman" picture was nothing short of an absolute disaster. More akin to Adam West's "Batman" from the 1960s than modern depictions of the Dark Knight, "Batman & Robin" was hated by audiences and critics alike, and for good reason. Although the film did well financially, the stars themselves hoped to distance themselves from "Batman & Robin," with George Clooney proclaiming that the film was a "waste of money." Needless to say, plans for "Batman Triumphant" were quickly canceled. Years later, Schumacher publicly apologized for making the movie.

Of course, Batman wouldn't stay down forever. Since the 1997 disaster, Christopher Nolan rebooted Batman via his "Dark Knight" trilogy, with Christian Bale in the leading role. After that, Zack Snyder reimagined the character for "Batman v Superman" and his version of "Justice League," with Ben Affleck as the Caped Crusader, followed by Matt Reeves' newly minted "The Batman" series starring Robert Pattinson. In 2023's "The Flash," both Affleck's Batman and Michael Keaton's version from Tim Burton's movies return to the cowl, and there's even another Batman movie, "The Brave and the Bold," in development.

When it comes to animation-to-live-action adaptations, big-budget blockbusters can be pretty hit or miss. Sadly, the biggest twist in M. Night Shyamalyan's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" remake is that it was absolutely nothing like the original animated series. Often considered one of the worst films ever made, it's obvious upon watching the trailer why "The Last Airbender" never got a sequel (they can't even pronounce Aang's name right, as one example). Not only was this Nickelodeon adaptation just generally terrible, but it was the lowest point of Shyamalan's filmography. Not even decent box office numbers could save him from this disaster. Talk about a major blow to one's career.

Ever since the failure that was "The Last Airbender," fans have hoped for a better live-action adaptation of "Avatar: The Last Airbender," and after years of waiting, Netflix is swooping in to save the day. Whether or not Netflix's upcoming adaptation is incredible or not, it will no doubt be loads better than the first attempt. Hopefully, they've learned from "The Last Airbender's" mistakes and will follow the animated series a bit more closely.