As movie franchises have been consuming all of the studios’ efforts over the past decade or so, they’ve raked in billions of dollars for Disney, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox and so many others. But not all movie franchises can have the same success as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as there are almost as many abandoned properties as there are successful ones.
Whether it’s completely missing the mark on what audiences wanted, trailing too far off the beaten path on adaptations of novels, or simply giving up before the franchise had even begun, movie studios would rather have audiences forget about these franchises.
The Green Lantern
Before Ryan Reynolds led the wildly successful Deadpool in 2016, which was the highest grossing R-rated movie of all-time until Joker knocked it off its pedestal, the actor had a rough start when it comes to superhero movies.
DC's The Green Lantern was panned by many, and being the start of what was planned to be a whole franchise, it was essentially over before it began. The controversial super suit was a source of ridicule in Deadpool's movie.
The Amazing Spider-Man
It’s no secret The Amazing Spider-Man was only made so Sony could keep the licensing rights of the character instead of handing it back to Marvel, so it could be argued very few people’s hearts were in the production. But it wasn’t until The Amazing Spider-Man 2 when critics and audiences were completely disappointed.
The movie underperformed at the box office and people had simply lost interest. The series was cancelled when Sony agreed to introduce a new version of Spidey in to the MCU. And though it’s unfortunate Andrew Garfield wasn’t able to round out a trilogy as the character, as he still had a lot of great moments as Peter Parker. Rumors are now swirling about him being in MCU's Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The Golden Com
studio altered the director’s vision, so it’s a project that almost seems like it was doomed from the start.
At the end of the day, it’s one of New Line Cinema’s most expensive projects ever and because it had such a troubled shoot, it’s no wonder they decided to can the franchise.
The Divergent Series
The ended on a massive cliffhanger, but it was planned to be wrapped up.
With the Divergent novel series consisting of three books, Lionsgate followed the trend of splitting the final book into two movies to double their profits, but that isn’t how it worked out. Allegiant, the third movie in the series underperformed at the box office, and taking into marketing costs, the movie lost millions for Lionsgate. This led to the studio cancelling the plans for the fourth movie.
The Percy Jackson Series
Being yet another young-adult fiction novel series, 20th Century Fox was quick to adapt it to appeal to fans of Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. However, though Fox thought it had a billion dollar franchise on its hands, that wasn’t exactly the case.
The rebooted in to a Disney+ original series.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
There was only one Unfortunate Events movie, but there are 13 books in the series. The plans for the franchise weren’t that well thought out in the first place, as all of the books feature the children at the same age; how that would have happened over the course of years with the same cast would have been impossible.
They would have had to take some liberties with the source material, and the idea of a sequel has taken many different forms ever since, including at one point a stop-motion movie. However, the franchise has since been rebooted into a now-ended Netflix original series.
Daredevil
Ben Affleck's Daredevil was planned to be the first of multiple movies in the series. 20th Century Fox looked at its success with X-Men and the astronomical box-office outcome Sony had with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and tried to repeat the success. But it didn’t exactly turn out as planned, as the movie was a massive bomb at the box office and with critics.
All progress being made on a sequel eventually came to a grinding halt. However, fans of the hero did get the Netflix series years later, which is one of the most faithful adaptations of a superhero of all time.
The Universal Dark Universe
The failure of the dark universe was almost embarrassing for Universal, as they made such a big deal out of it before production had even began on the first movie in the series. From casting an array of A-list actors to play classic monsters, to the pretentious Dark Universe reveal, the studio banked too much on the star power.
Not even Tom Cruise could save it, as most expensive box office bombs, leading to Universal putting an immediate stop to all future plans for the franchise.
The Millennium Series
2011 saw the release of David Fincher’s incredible and stylish crime thriller, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which was planned to be the first in a trilogy. Why there was no sequel still remains unclear, as the movie was successful and the whole creative team behind the original movie was involved in developing a sequel, including Fincher himself.
There was even a planned release date for 2013, but that date came and went. With Fincher being notoriously demanding, the problem could have come down to that, but nobody’s to know. Sony did reboot the series with 2018’s Girl in the Spider’s Web, yet considering that was a major box office bomb, they should have tried harder to follow through on Fincher’s vision.
Rain Johnson’s Star Wars Trilogy
After having directed what many consider the most controversial Star Wars movie The Last Jedi, it was announced Rian Johnson would be spearheading a whole new trilogy.
Though there hasn’t been any update and it hasn’t officially been cancelled, and even Johnson himself seems to think it’s still going ahead, there has been no word on it since. Even during the giant Disney press conference in 2020, in which they announced a whole slew of new Star Wars movies, Johnson’s trilogy wasn’t mentioned once. That’s almost confirmation enough.
