10 Abandoned Franchises That Deserved Another Movie

2. Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy

Hellboy 2
Universal Pictures

Last year's Hellboy reboot tanked spectacularly at the box office and failed to even recoup the relatively modest $50m budget, and was savaged by both critics and fans as one of the worst comic book movies in recent memory, which made it all the more upsetting that Guillermo del Toro was never afforded the opportunity to finish his trilogy.

Del Toro's Hellboy movies never exactly did Marvel business at the box office after combining for a solid-if-unspectacular $268m globally on production costs of just over $150m. The first installment and sequel The Golden Army may have done huge numbers on home video, but it still wasn't enough to convince the studio to part with the near-$100m it would have required to bring Big Red's arc to a conclusion.

Both the director and star Ron Perlman campaigned for years to get Hellboy III into production, but their frequent pleas ultimately fell on deaf ears. However, you can still imagine a smirk crossing the Academy Award-winning filmmaker's face when he found out how the reboot had gone down like a lead balloon.

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