These Movie Sequels Were Not Originally Meant To Be A Sequel At All

One often hears complaints about how Hollywood has become too reliant on sequels and franchises instead of telling original stories. Of course, is this phenomenon is nothing new. Ever since its inception, the film industry has relied on existing IP to get people into theaters. 

Sometimes this means adapting existing stories from other mediums into movies. Other times you get one successful original film, and the studio then bankrolls a string of sequels and spinoffs to cash in on the brand recognition. That's what happened to hits like "Rocky," "Indiana Jones," and "Jaws," not to mention the many, many ongoing series in the horror genre.  

When it comes to making sequels, studios don't always have a clear plan for moving the story forward from a standalone movie once it becomes a box office hit. This sometimes results in an original script being reworked to quickly turn it into a sequel by adding in familiar characters and circumstances. This sort of thing happens more often than you would think, as proven by just how many sequels started out as original stories. 

Few movies have had as much of an impact on their genre as 1988's "Die Hard" has had on the action landscape. The film moved away from big, flashy action sequences featuring giant men with bulging biceps to tell a gritty, grounded story of an ordinary cop trying to take down a group of terrorists in a Los Angeles skyscraper using his wits and cunning. 

The breakout success of "Die Hard" made a star out of its lead Bruce Willis, and gave the studio a promising new property to turn into a franchise with multiple sequels. While 1990's "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" more or less sets the same type of action in another centralized location — this time an airport — the third film in the series switches things up. 1995's "Die Hard with a Vengeance" features Willis returning as John McClane in a race to uncover the threat of a series of bombs planted across New York City. The reason the premise of "Die Hard with a Vengeance" is so different from the original "Die Hard" is because it was initially an original script titled "Troubleshooter" by James Haggin (via The Los Angeles Times). 

After Haggin sold his script to Largo Entertainment, "Troubleshooter" was passed on to Fox, and the studio decided to turn it into the third "Die Hard" movie. Then the script for "Troubleshooter" underwent several rewrites before it eventually turned into "Die Hard with a Vengeance," to the point where the final movie has little in common with Haggin's original script.    

Before donning the Batman cowl to defend Gotham City from psychopaths in the "Dark Knight" trilogy, Christian Bale murdered his way into the hearts of audiences as Patrick Bateman, the lead character in 2000's dark satire "American Psycho." In director Mary Harron's nuanced take on Bret Easton Ellis' novel, Bale turned in an unforgettable performance as the Reagan-era Wall Street hotshot who moonlights as a serial killer. 

The movie was shocking, disturbing, and the stuff that cult classics are made of. Although it didn't pull in a lot of money at the box office, "American Psycho" was deemed a significant enough hit that the studio greenlit a sequel in 2002 starring Mila Kunis as Rachael, a budding serial killer who offs a non-Bale version of Patrick Bateman at the start of the movie before embarking on her own murder spree.

"American Psycho II: All American Girl" carries none of the compelling characterization or gallows humor that made the original such a memorable movie. In fact, "American Psycho II: All American Girl" feels barely connected to the world of the original, and that's because it initially wasn't connected at all. And this wasn't just a late-stage re-write — the movie was well into production under the title "The Girl Who Wouldn't Die" before its connection to Harron's film was shoehorned in (per The Guardian). "When I did ['American Psycho II'], It was supposed to be a different project," Kunis explained to MTV. "And it was re-edited, but, ooh ... I don't know. Bad."

The 2000s saw the start of a fresh new era for torture-based horror movies with the release of 2004's "Saw." Directed by James Wan in his feature film debut, the movie signaled the arrival of a bold new voice in horror with its twisted story of a serial killer who traps people he considers immoral and makes them suffer in horrific ways to make them atone for their sins.

Despite its highly graphic content (or because of it), "Saw" became a surprise must-see for horror fans, and its impact on the genre was instant. It was not long before the studio announced a sequel — in fact, the movie was still playing the festival circuit when Lionsgate got to work. The problem was that Wan had already gotten involved in other projects, and could not return as the director. Enter budding filmmaker Darren Lynn Bousman, who had written an original script titled "The Desperate," which carried many similarities to "Saw." Bousman's script was shown to the original film's producers, and they realized that with a bit of tinkering, "The Desperate" could be turned into "Saw II." 

The idea of turning his original story into a sequel for another movie did not immediately appeal to Bousman. But then the producers showed him an early cut of "Saw" before the movie started blowing up outside of film festival circles. "I saw [the film] and I was like, 'Holy s***, this movie is amazing," Bousman told Bloody Disgusting. "I immediately got how similar [my script] was in tone and style to what 'Saw' was." Finally, Bousman agreed to turn "The Desperate" into the sequel to "Saw."  

After turning "The Cellar" into "10 Cloverfield Lane" resulted in a critical and financial success, producer J.J. Abrams decided to try the same approach to create a third film in the series, again based on an original script that started out as a standalone story unrelated to "Cloverfield" or its sequel.

The script in question turned out to be "God Particle," a spec script written by Oren Uziel that Abrams' company had bought, and which was already slated to be produced as an original film before Abrams had the idea to turn the story into a continuation of the "Cloverfield" franchise. Uziel has gone on record saying he is happy his original story was turned into a sequel, since it guaranteed a pre-existing audience based on the popularity of the franchise. As he told Collider, "If that stamp of approval of being part of the Cloverfield universe is enough, that's a huge win [for the movie]."  

And so "God Particle" became "The Cloverfield Paradox," telling a story set in the distant future whose events set up the first "Cloverfield" through some alternate timeline shenanigans. This was an aspect that particularly appealed to Abrams, as he told The Independent, "I liked how something in the future could be an origin for something in the past."

You could say that the modern heist genre can be split into eras: before "Ocean's Eleven," and after "Ocean's Eleven." The 2001 film, in itself a remake of the 1960 movie of the same name, had such a massive impact on the cinematic landscape that it's still being referenced two decades later in mainstream pop culture (via IndieWire).

The massive critical and commercial success of "Ocean's Eleven" made greenlighting a sequel a no-brainer. This time around, the studio looked to an original screenplay written by George Nofli entitled "Honor Among Thieves," which told the story of an exciting game of one-upsmanship between two master con artists. "The script had within it a terrific idea for 'Ocean's Twelve,'" producer Jerry Weintraub told IGN. "The story centered around two main characters, so the biggest challenge was adapting it to fit our ensemble."

Director Steven Soderbergh, returning after his slick craftsmanship had made "Eleven" such a hit, agreed with Weintraub's assessment, explaining in the same interview, "The tone of George Nolfi's script was very similar to the tone of 'Ocean's Eleven.'" And so Soderbergh set to work alongside leading man George Clooney turning Nolfi's screenplay into the second installment of a series that would go on to become a full trilogy of modern heist classics.

There's clearly no shortage of cash-grab sequels to well-respected classics. But there are also plenty of movies unanimously declared trash that still somehow manage to achieve enough cult status to spawn a follow-up. One such movie was 1986's "Troll," the story of a magician named Torok who has been transformed into a malevolent  troll, seeking to right past wrongs by destroying all of humanity with his magic ring.

The original "Troll" was a generic, by-the-numbers schlock horror movie that nonetheless managed to make a decent profit at the box office. But true history was made by its sequel, "Troll 2." The film has gained a legacy as a cult hit on the back of its reputation as one of the worst movies ever made, with a bewildering plot concerning vegetarian goblins, and not a single troll in sight.

If it seems strange to make a "Troll" movie without an actual troll, that's because the original screenplay for "Troll 2" was simply titled "Goblins," and had nothing to do with the "Troll" franchise (per The Guardian). "Goblins" was meant to be a comedy, but the studio insisted on trying to turn the script into a straight horror. The awkward mish-mash of the two tones gave rise to something neither the studio nor the film's makers could have anticipated, but which nevertheless managed to gather an army of fans worldwide.