10 Costly Mistakes That Doomed Great Movie Franchises

Things were going so well for Sam Raimi's game-changing Spider-Man series.

Alongside the outstanding first few X-Men flicks (oh, we'll get there), Raimi's own Spider-Verse was one of the first to really capture the comic book spirit of a beloved superhero and successfully swing such an icon onto the big-screen.

Those first two Spidey outings for Tobey Maguire and co. were oozing heart, contained the occasional moment of enjoyable silliness, fully fleshed out characters, and also found the time to really nail some of the more emotional beats required of a Peter Parker story.

They also largely just focused on the one member of Spidey's legendary rogues' gallery, something the third instalment in the series sadly most certainly did not.

It was that call to try and juggle way too many Web-head antagonists in that disappointing 2007 threequel, with Raimi eventually being pressured to include fan-favourite Venom by producer Avi Arad after his initial plan to briefly introduce Vulture in the film was dropped, that ultimately resulted in an entirely muddled and over-stuffed feature.

In the wake of that franchise low point, a planned fourth entry was then scrapped on the back of Raimi feeling he was in danger of producing yet another underwhelming Spider-movie after failing to nail the story before Sony's deadline as the studio pushed ahead with an Amazing reboot instead.