10 Biggest Ever Movie Franchise Mistakes
6. Trying To Turn It Into A Blockbuster Franchise - Predator
It's absolutely fair to say that the Predator franchise has forever been struggling to match the brilliance of John McTiernan's 1987 original.
At least Predator 2 offered up an intriguing urban switch-up and 2010's Predators was entertainingly action-packed, even if neither got close to their predecessor.
With 2018's The Predator, however, Fox had massive ambitions to effectively reinvent the franchise, shifting away from its action-horror roots and into big-budget blockbuster territory.
Armed with a mighty $88 million price tag - literally the combined budget of the three previous films - The Predator aimed to transform the franchise into a larger-scale "universe" of movies.
This is despite the fact that nothing in the prior movies had indicated Predator would benefit from interconnected, relentlessly sequelised storytelling.
The brutal efficiency of the original film is what made it work so well, and the strength of both Predator 2 and Predators is that they're more-or-less standalone.
This is all without getting into the fact that The Predator went through a strained production process rife with reshoots and was widely lambasted for a head-scratching subplot involving weaponised autism (seriously).
Amid negative reviews and general audience apathy, The Predator was a massive box office disappointment, pumping the brakes on the planned sequels in the process.
Fittingly the upcoming next entry in the series, Prey, is a smaller-scale, lower-budget horror film closer to the style and tone of the original Verhoeven film, and will be foregoing a theatrical release entirely.
On paper it certainly sounds like a better fit for the series, attempting to recapture the blunt essence of the '87 original rather than reshaping it into something it categorically isn't.