It’s not that surprising that pretty much every studio in Hollywood would love its own version of the Avengers franchise or some sort of intellectual property that keeps printing money for a decade. That appetite has produced a handful of genuine success stories that fans and critics still praise. Still, there’s an even longer list of one-and-done experiments that turned into expensive lessons these studios would have preferred not to learn.
The five movies below belong on that list. Each piece was supposed to be the start of something huge, with sequels drafted and contracts signed. Instead, every single one faced obstacles – box office numbers and corporate politics included – that effectively put a stop to any ambition of a franchise project.
1. The Golden Compass (2007)
The Golden Compass looked like a lock for a trilogy when it hit theaters in 2007, but the numbers tell a different story. New Line Cinema fully planned for a strong adaptation of all three of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels. They even locked in Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and a young Dakota Blue Richards for what was meant to be three movies. The plan was off to a flier when The Golden Compass made $380 million worldwide against a $180 million budget. But things weren’t so rosy domestically, where it only managed just over $70 million.
It wasn’t nearly enough for what a trilogy launch needed to justify the next installment. A very public Catholic League boycott over the source material’s anti-religious themes didn’t help either. That spooked New Line, and they promptly shelved The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. By 2009, Pullman officially confirmed the sequels were dead. HBO eventually finished the story properly, minus the picket lines outside theaters.
2. John Carter (2012)
Disney lost roughly $200 million on John Carter. This movie cost them more than $350 million to make and market, but it then limped to a comparatively measly $284 million worldwide. That figure made it one of the biggest box office bombs in the studio’s history. Director Andrew Stanton, fresh off Finding Nemo and Wall-E, had two sequels mapped out: Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars.
Both were based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ old Mars novels, so they had plenty of material to work with. What actually killed any franchise ambition was execution. The marketing campaign was so muddled that Disney’s own trailers couldn’t explain the plot, and the title was generic enough that audiences struggled to connect it to Burroughs’ pulp novels. Disney lost the film rights entirely in 2014, and that basically closed the door on Stanton’s trilogy for good.
3. Ender’s Game (2013)
Ender’s Game had four books’ worth of story ready to go, which rarely happens in Hollywood. Orson Scott Card’s original novel was followed by Speaker for the Dead, which matched it by winning the Hugo and the Nebula. Xenocide and Children of the Mind kept the story going as award nominees even without a win. Lionsgate’s 2013 film adaptation of the first book starred Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford, and made $125 million worldwide on a budget of $110 million. It’s a fine figure on paper until marketing costs eat into it.
The movie also had to deal with Card’s history of anti-gay marriage activism, with the group Geeks OUT launching a “Skip Ender’s Game” campaign. Director Gavin Hood had actually pushed to shoot a companion film, an adaptation of the interquel Ender’s Shadow, back-to-back with the first movie, but Lionsgate wasn’t willing to gamble that much money on an unproven property. Card himself later closed the door on any Speaker for the Dead movie anyway, calling the book “unfilmable” at a 2013 panel and saying outright he didn’t want it made.
4. Mortal Engines (2018)
The entire premise of Mortal Engines is giant cities on wheels swallowing smaller towns for parts. Peter Jackson spent years trying to make it before finally stepping back to produce and co-write. He handed the director’s chair to longtime collaborator Christian Rivers, and the film adapted the first of Philip Reeve’s four-book series, with plenty of story left untouched.
It opened to a paltry $7.5 million domestically before finishing its entire run at about $84 million worldwide. That’s way short of the $100 million it cost to make it, excluding the marketing costs. Critics weren’t kind either, as they tore into a plot that took way longer to explain than to watch unfold. Universal never spoke publicly about a sequel again, and Reeve’s other three books are still sitting there, unadapted, probably waiting for someone brave to try again.
5. Power Rangers (2017)
Anyone who grew up on the original ‘90s Power Rangers show remembers a new team suiting up every few seasons. Lionsgate wanted that same energy back and signed the 2017 reboot cast (including Dacre Montgomery as the Red Ranger) to four Power Rangers movies from day one. The plan, according to Montgomery, was a Hunger Games-style rollout that never materialized.
The first movie made $142 million worldwide against a $100 million budget. That result looked survivable on paper, but the feedback from China ended any dreams of a franchise. Lionsgate needed a strong showing there to justify any plans to move forward, but the movie opened to just $3 million there. Consequently, Lionsgate cut its losses and quietly killed the deal. A new reboot has been rumored more than once, but nothing has come of those rumors so far.
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