10 Recent Movie Sequels That Came Out Of Nowhere
These recent movie sequels all flew WAY under the radar.
Generally speaking, movie studios want to market the hell out of a sequel and ensure that those who enjoyed the first one are acutely aware that a new one is coming out.
But it's also fair to say that the filmmaking landscape has shifted considerably in recent years, as theatrical has lost its monopoly on our eyeballs and streaming has become a home for the overwhelming majority of films produced, sequel or no.
And while sequels released on streaming of course still get promoted, the paradigm is quite different, as services like Netflix and Amazon don't necessarily need to spend big on billboards and TV commercials when they can just... serve the films to you directly on a service you already subscribe to.
Yet the result of this is often that you might not even know a sequel has been written, shot, completed, and released before you actually hear about it, compared to theatrical sequels which generally receive more of a traditional, all-encompassing marketing blitz.
And that's absolutely true of these 10 recent sequels, each of which feel like they pretty much materialised out of thin air...
10. Ice Road: Vengeance
You might fleetingly remember The Ice Road - a 2021 Netflix Original action thriller starring Liam Neeson as a trucker who mounts a perilous mission across the tundra to help rescue workers trapped in a collapsed diamond mine.
It was... fine, but ultimately just another forgettable, programmatic action vehicle.
Despite it coming and going without making much of a dent, sequel Ice Road: Vengeance was quietly shot last year, and with the lack of the number "2" in the title, many likely assumed it was simply another standalone Neeson romp.
But even if you did remember The Ice Road, this sequel probably caught you by surprise given that the trailer dropped just four days before it received a theatrical release so small its grosses weren't even reported.
To the surprise of few it was critically panned, and distributor Vertical then sent the sequel to streaming just four days later. There's sending a film out to die and then there's... whatever this is.