"Greed is good." So said megalomaniacal financier Gordon Gecko in the '80s classic Wall Street. Unfortunately, Gecko has real-life counterparts in the leadership ranks of Hollywood's motion picture industry. These men and women are ready, willing, and able to turn any movie which turns a decent buck into a franchise. We live in an era in which sequels and/or prequels are sometimes announced before a movie is even released; as if it's a foregone conclusion that a blockbuster is imminent or something. As a result, we frequently get to see unasked-for sequels or prequels doing poorly at the box office. But rather than learn the errors of their ways through one particularly ill-judged project, movie moguls seem to just double-down in their franchise fever. Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes you have to know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run. Sometimes, the only way to win is not to play. In my not-so-humble opinion, here are 10 bloated movie franchises which need to stop now...
10. Pirates Of The Caribbean
Pirates of The Caribbean has wildly overachieved for a franchise which was famously inspired from the Disney theme park of the same name. To date, this franchise has generated just under $4 billion at the global box office. Alas, chedda doesn't always make things betta. The exits of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly essentially made Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" a Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow one-man off, off Broadway play shot on film. Storywise, Pirates 4 was as hopeless as a penny with a hole in it. This just in: Disney reportedly has pushed back the intended summer 2015 release date of "Pirates 5" to at least June 2016. Why? After the box office failure of The Lone Ranger this summer - another Johnny Depp/Jerry Bruckheimer vehicle - Disney apparently wants to take its time to ensure that another "Pirates" adventure is commercially viable. As is the case with most movie studios, Disney simply cannot walk away from such a lucrative series of films. I would be shocked if Johnny Depp isn't sick to death of playing Captain Jack Sparrow by now. But The House of Mouse will cut him such an enormous check, he will quickly suit back up, savvy? As long as we the moviegoing public keep marching into such films like zombies or robots, we should all keep in mind Captain Jack's saying whenever a lovely lass slaps him silly: "I may have deserved that."