10 More Insane Reasons Actors Didn't Return For Sequels

10. James Franco Was Completely Ignored - Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

With the first three films in the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy being centered around one ape - namely Andy Serkis' Caesar - the human element was left to come and go. No human characters played a part in more than one chapter of the story, but this almost wasn't the case.

James Franco portrayed Will in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and was directly responsible for kickstarting the entire Simian Flu pandemic. When Caesar revisited his old home in the sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, though, Will was nowhere to be seen.

There was a tiny cameo where the leader of the apes saw a video of himself and Will, but the yellow X that marked the house as contaminated suggested that Franco's character suffered the same fate as most humans in the story. There was a time, though, when the actor would have returned in some capacity.

Franco told CBM that there was a plan for him to return while Rise director Rupert Wyatt was still attached to direct the sequel. However, once Wyatt left the project and was replaced by Matt Reeves, Franco was essentially ghosted by the studio, with no one getting in touch with him at all.