10 Great Movies That Never Got A Sequel

There are a lot of movies in cinematic history who got really, really bad sequels. Even "The Godfather," Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece, suffered from sequel fatigue; even though "The Godfather Part II" might surpass the original, the oft-maligned "The Godfather Part III" is nothing more than a punchline. We don't have to go as high-and-mighty as "The Godfather," though; really, really good films like "Legally Blonde," "Jaws," and "The Exorcist" all got awful sequels, and though those sequels didn't ruin the reputations of the original, it still stings that studios decided to continue these stories past their natural endpoints.

With that in mind, what are some truly phenomenal movies that, thankfully, don't have sequels? For starters, that's certainly something that can and does change, but while compiling this list, we were careful to pick movies that have either been around long enough that there's probably no need for a sequel or even movies where the creators have explicitly said a sequel isn't going to happen. From uproarious comedies to childhood classics to an Oscar-winning modern horror classic, here are ten incredible movies that never got a sequel ... and furthermore, whether that was a good or a bad thing. (The answers might surprise you!) Also, spoilers for all of these movies to follow!

Paul Feig's 2011 comedy "Bridesmaids" helped dispel the myth that women "aren't funny," thanks to its incredible performances and pitch-perfect script (written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, the former of whom stars in the film and the latter of whom has a really great cameo). When we meet Wiig's Annie Walker, she's down on her luck, to put it nicely; her bakery went under, she's living with two demented roommates, and things take a weird turn when her best friend Lillian Donovan (Maya Rudolph, a perfect addition to any project) gets engaged. As Lillian's maid of honor, Annie finds herself "competing" with Lillian's new fabulously wealthy friend Helen Harris III (Rose Byrne, who's funnier than anyone could have imagined before this movie) for Lillian's affection, and as Helen basically takes over the bridal party, Annie goes even further off the rails. With comedy powerhouses like Ellie Kemper, Wendi McLendon-Covey, and Melissa McCarthy — who earned an Oscar nod for this movie — as the rest of the bridal party, "Bridesmaids" is just incredibly, unbelievably funny, especially the scene where all the girls get food poisoning at a pristine, posh bridal salon.

Wiig herself told The Hollywood Reporter in March 2024 that while the financial success of "Bridesmaids" certainly sent the right message to the industry — "People get scared. What's wrong with having a big female cast, why is that scary?" — she's wholly uninterested in a sequel. "It's never been a conversation," Wiig confirmed. "That story had an end, and it's so beloved to me for 10 million reasons, and I think it's OK to just have it exist in the world as it is." That is, honestly, for the best; "Bridesmaids" is perfect as is.

Shane Black's movies all basically strike the same irreverent, off-beat tone, but one of his best-ever action comedies, "The Nice Guys," always feels like it's criminally overlooked. Released in 2016, the film casts Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as private eye Holland March and hired muscle Jackson Healy, respectively, who end up teaming up under extremely unexpected circumstances. While Holland is trying to find a missing young woman, he finds a different one instead — Amelia Kuttner, played by Margaret Qualley in an early role — who freaks out and sends Jackson to attack Holland. Despite getting off to a weird start (in that Jackson breaks Holland's arm), the two ultimately decide to work together to help save Amelia, who might be in some sort of danger.

Gosling and Crowe are a truly unexpected duo, and they're great together, so honestly, "The Nice Guys" might lead to a pretty fun sequel if one ever gets made. Sadly, the film was a box office bomb, barely making back its $50 million budget with $62 million, so it seems unlikely. Gosling, for his part, has an explanation; in April 2024, he spoke to Comic Book and said he's pretty sure he knows why "The Nice Guys 2" never materialized. ""So much of a sequel, I think, is decided by the opening weekend of a movie, and we opened up against 'Angry Birds,'" Gosling said. "So 'Angry Birds' just, just destroyed us. 'Angry Birds' got a sequel." Unfortunately, Gosling is probably correct, but we can still hold out hope.

If you were a kid in the 1990s, you're definitely familiar with Steven Spielberg's heartstring-tugging children's movie "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." After young Elliott Taylor (Henry Thomas) finds the alien E.T. after he's abandoned by his ship while they briefly inspect Earth, the two become inseparable ... but government agents eventually apprehend the alien after Elliott realizes he has telekinetic powers. E.T. ends up finding his way back to his brethren with Elliott's help, and their separation is nothing short of heartbreaking — but still, Spielberg himself said he's totally uninterested in a sequel and actually fought to ensure one wouldn't be made without him.

During a TCM Classic Film Festival pop-up event in New York in January 2025, Spielberg said of his "freeze" deal (per The Hollywood Reporter), "That was a real hard-fought victory because I didn't have any rights. Before 'E.T.,' I had some rights, but I didn't have a lot of rights," he said, speaking alongside Drew Barrymore (who co-starred in the film). "I kind of didn't have what we call 'the freeze,' where you can stop the studio from making a sequel because you control the freeze on sequels, remakes and other ancillary uses of the IP," he continued. "I didn't have that. I got it after 'E.T.' because of its success."

Spielberg did have a concept for a potential sequel — focusing on E.T.'s home planet — but eventually decided against it. The film technically got a short film sequel in 2019 in the form of a commercial that aired during the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but that definitely doesn't count; otherwise, it's for the best that this perfect film never got a follow-up.

Besides the "Dark Knight" trilogy, it seems like Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan pretty rarely ever makes sequels to his films ... and that's a good impulse, because his standalone projects tell such full and complete stories. You could honestly pick any of Nolan's non-"Batman" movies here, but we're going to focus on 2010's "Inception," partly because of its overwhelming popularity and partly because it ends on such a wonderfully ambiguous and oft-debated moment that a sequel would totally ruin it. When master thief Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is offered a job that will help clear his status as a wanted criminal and allow him to return home to his children, he assembles a brilliant team, including mission researcher Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), architecture student Ariadne (Elliot Page), and forger and identity thief Eames (Tom Hardy). The problem? They have to infiltrate the dream of wealthy business heir Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy, Nolan's frequent collaborator) and plant an idea to dissolve his father's massive company using a concept known as "inception," which is nearly impossible.

"Inception" never got a sequel, and Nolan has never commented or expressed interest in the idea. Again, this is good. "Inception" is great and finite, and a sequel would just be a soulless cash grab; let Nolan make new stories instead.

After making a name for himself in sketch comedy, Jordan Peele pivoted to horror with his 2017 directorial debut "Get Out," and the world is better for it. In his incisive first feature film — which won him an Oscar for best original screenplay — Peele skewers "well-intentioned" white liberals through the eyes of Chris (Daniel Kaluuya, who should have won an Oscar for his stunning central performance), a guy who heads out of town with his girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams, shrewdly skewering her "Girls" persona) to meet her parents. When they arrive at the Armitage home and meet Rose's dad Dean (Bradley Whitford), mom Missy (Catherine Keener), and brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones), Chris notices something weird: the Armitages employ Black servants who seem strangely placid and cheerful, and when the Armitages host an annual gathering, things get even stranger when everyone marvels over Chris. Ultimately, Chris discovers that he's part of a long-running scheme, and not only is Rose in on it, but she orchestrated the entire weekend to entrap him.

Look, it's understandable that people would want more from the world of "Get Out" — a world where we eventually learn that the Armitage family pioneered a deeply dubious and entirely unethical medical procedure that implants the consciousnesses of wealthy white people into younger, fitter Black bodies. Still, considering that all of the Armitages die as Chris stages his daring escape, a sequel would be unnecessary and probably pretty uninteresting. 

One of the greatest teen movies ever made, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," a John Hughes classic that stars Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, and Jennifer Grey and came out in 1986, never got a sequel — which is good, actually. We follow Broderick the titular Ferris Bueller as he decides to take a day off from school, convincing his uptight and paranoid best friend Cameron Frye (Ruck) and Ferris' beautiful, adventurous girlfriend Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) to join him. Through a series of increasingly elaborate ruses, Ferris tricks his school and parents, but sends his obsessed principal Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) on a wild goose chase as Rooney tries to prove that Ferris is faking it; meanwhile, Ferris' older sister Jeannie (Grey) grows more and more furious as the school starts holding rallies and drives to "save Ferris" from his allegedly deadly illness. Set in Chicago on a truly perfect day, the movie is a glimpse into Ferris' young, carefree life, and it's truly and utterly perfect.

So was a sequel ever even on the table? Broderick said, of a second collaboration with Hughes in 2010 (to Vanity Fair), that the two discussed it and ultimately decided against it. We did stay in touch for a while. "We thought about a sequel to 'Ferris Bueller,' where he'd be in college or at his first job, and the same kinds of things would happen again," the actor said. "But neither of us found a very exciting hook to that. The movie is about a singular time in your life." Broderick and Hughes (the latter of whom passed away in 2009) were right ... and the less said about the truly awkward "Ferris Bueller" TV show that starred Jennifer Aniston, the better.

Dean Parisot's hysterical 1999 sci-fi spoof "Galaxy Quest" is the perfect example of a cult classic that's gained a bigger and bigger following since its initial release ... but for a few pretty solid reasons, a sequel still seems out of the question to this day. Centered around the cast of a fictional and super-popular TV show called "Galaxy Quest" (that definitely takes a bunch of cues from the "Star Trek" franchise), the movie sees cast members Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen), Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver), Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman), Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) as they attend a convention celebrating the show's success. What none of them fully realize until it's too late is that a group of aliens called the Thermians have created a full replica of the original ship from "Galaxy Quest" and want their help defeating real intergalactic enemies. (The leader of the Thermians, Mathesar, is played by future "Veronica Mars" star Enrico Colantoni, and he is so, so funny, and Sam Rockwell is also excellent as the cast's handler Guy Fleegman who was an extra in a single episode of the series.)

Over the years, Colantoni, Rockwell, and a number of others have weighed in on a possible "Galaxy Quest" sequel and said a variety of things — and a TV show has also been discussed — but if we're all being honest, the idea of a good sequel to "Galaxy Quest" vanished when Rickman died in early 2016. Without Rickman, "Galaxy Quest" could never return to its full glory; if it does, it'll be missing something truly special.

Adam McKay's 2008 comedic masterpiece "Step Brothers" is one of the wildest, craziest, and over-the-top comedies in recent cinematic history ... and it's for the best that its insanity is confined to a single film, because this kind of lightning usually doesn't strike twice. (Think about "Anchorman" and its utterly lackluster sequel, or "Zoolander" and its overtly awful sequel.) Large adult children Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) and Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) are perfectly content living with their respective parents Dr. Robert Doback (Richard Jenkins) and Nancy Huff (Mary Steenburgen), but when Robert and Nancy fall in love, they're all forced to cohabitate. At first, Dale and Brennan find themselves at war with each other, but after unexpectedly bonding over swords and night vision goggles, they become best friends and cause new kinds of disasters around the house (like when they try to "make" their beds into bunk beds, which goes exactly as well as you might think).

"Step Brothers" — bolstered by incredible supporting turns from Adam Scott (as Dale's awful brother Derek) and Kathryn Hahn (as Derek's legitimately deranged wife Alice who seduces Dale) — is a singular, one-of-a-kind, beautifully bonkers comedy from McKay, Ferrell, and Reilly. Unfortunately, Ferrell and Reilly's subsequent team-ups, like "Holmes & Watson" in 2018, have flopped. McKay and Ferrell went through a creative split in 2021. Also, in 2020, Reilly told Conan O'Brien, "Like a lot of artists, all three of us [himself, Ferrell, and McKay] kind of felt like, 'Well, you know, unless we were really sure that we could do a better version or improve on what it is, let's leave it alone." Basically, we're not getting a "Step Brothers" sequel, which is excellent news.

David Fincher's bravura 2018 adaptation of Gillian Flynn's hit novel "Gone Girl" is incredibly underappreciated, but fans of this excellent and tightly-wound film know that it's one of the acclaimed director's very best projects. When "nice" Midwestern guy Nick Dunne (a perfectly cast Ben Affleck) discovers his house in disarray and his wife Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) missing on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, he's forced to defend himself as everyone tries to figure out if he's behind his wife's disappearance. The audience actually knows that Nick isn't responsible, but he's definitely not innocent; after pulling away from Amy and bringing her from Manhattan to Missouri to help his terminally ill mother, Nick repays her kindness — and financial help opening his own bar in the small town — by cheating on her with the much younger Andie Fitzgerald (Emily Ratajkowski). As Nick races against time to figure out what did happen to Amy alongside his loyal twin sister Margo (an incredible Carrie Coon), the audience ultimately learns that Amy is behind Amy's disappearance, and there's a lot more at play here than just a simple disappearance.

"Gone Girl" is a beautifully plotted and nearly airtight thriller, and a sequel wouldn't do anyone any favors, even if the movie and book end with the revelation that Amy is pregnant (only because she pilfered old sperm samples provided by Nick when the couple was happier and considering having a baby). There's been incredibly light chatter about a sequel, but nothing concrete for a long time as of this writing, and it's best to let sleeping dogs lie with "Gone Girl."

There are two kinds of people in the world: people who have seen "My Cousin Vinny" and love it, and people who haven't seen "My Cousin Vinny." Jonathan Lynn's 1992 comedy puts college students Bill Gambini (Ralph Macchio) and Stan Rothenstein (Mitchell Whitfield) into a precarious and largely unfunny position when, after accidentally shoplifting a can of tuna at a Georgia convenience store, they inadvertently confess to the murder of the store's clerk that occurs moments after they leave — but things really get going when Bill's titular cousin, the stunningly named Vincent LaGuardia Gambini III (Joe Pesci), drives in from New York to represent him. The problem? Vincent, who goes by Vinny with his friends and loved ones, has never tried a real case before ... and it took him six attempts to pass the bar exam. Bill and Stan aren't exactly hopeful after Vinny's disastrous first few days in court facing off against the irascible Judge Chamberlain Haller (Fred Gwynne), but eventually, with the help of his passionate and quietly brilliant fiancée Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei, who won a well-deserved Oscar for the film), he figures out what really happened.

A sequel to "My Cousin Vinny" was proposed where Vinny crosses the pond to London and tries to practice law there, but without Tomei — who dropped out — the project vanished. Aside from a novel series based on the story, "My Cousin Vinny" remains a perfectly-plotted comedy ... and thankfully, there's no sequel.