10 Abandoned Franchises That Deserved Another Movie
Tyler Perry's Madea has been in eleven movies, so why couldn't we get another Del Toro Hellboy?
Movie studios generally don't take anyone other than themselves into consideration when it comes to deciding what their next blockbuster franchises are going to be, even if most people can spot a bad idea from a mile off.
After all, these are the same people who thought audiences would love King Arthur: Legend of the Sword so much that they'd immediately buy into the idea of a six-movie Knights of the Round Table cinematic universe, and were so confident in Tom Cruise spearheading The Mummy to success that Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp were already signed up for future adventures in the Dark Universe.
Obviously that turned out not to be the case as both of those movies failed spectacularly, but on the other side of the coin there are plenty of potential franchises that have been left by the wayside over the years as the higher-ups became continuously distracted by newer, even shinier toys.
Of course, things like box office success and a warm critical reception go a long way to determining if a project is worthy of sequels, but there have been a number of movies that had the potential to go much further before they eventually found themselves consigned to being a footnote in Hollywood history.
10. Push
While the script could have undoubtedly done with more than a little fine-tuning, Paul McGuigan's Push is still a killer concept, and would have likely fared much better had it arrived several years later when the Marvel Cinematic Universe had propelled the comic book genre to new heights.
Creating an entirely unique and engaging superhero mythology is no easy task, but the concept of individuals getting categorized by their powers and then manipulated into doing the bidding of a shadowy government agency managed to do just that despite the formulaic synopsis, and it seemed ripe with franchise potential.
However, the $38m movie failed to even crack $50m at the global box office, and we never got the chance to expand on the adventures of the various Movers, Watchers, Pushers, Shifters, Stiches, Shadows, Sniffs and Wipers and Bleeders that inhabited the world.