10 Flop Movies That Somehow Got Sequels

A basic understanding of the economics of Hollywood suggests that for a movie to get a sequel, it needs to perform at least decently well at the box office, right?

After all, what possible sense is there in a studio greenlighting a second film when nobody turned up for the first? That just isn't how money gets made, and it isn't how smart producers operate.

But at the same time, there are always outliers - there are always those movies that underperformed or outright bombed commercially and yet, for one reason or another, they managed to wrangle themselves another go-around.

And that's absolutely true of these 10 movies, which despite flopping on their face on the big screen, all eventually ended up with a sequel.

Perhaps a passionate filmmaker persuaded the studio to roll the dice one more, maybe somebody felt a new movie that went in a bold new direction could reverse the series' fortunes, or it's simply a case of the pandemic causing a less-than-expected commercial performance.

Whatever the reason, these films all defied the odds and the logic of the bean counters to get a sequel, proving that anything is possible in Hollywood...

Though the first entry into Kenneth Branagh's big-screen Poirot franchise - 2017's Murder on the Orient Express - grossed an impressive $352.8 million against a sensible $55 million budget, sequel Death on the Nile didn't enjoy nearly the same success.

On a monstrous $100 million budget - largely due to its greater reliance on visual effects - it grossed just $137.3 million, making it a sure-fire flop.

However, context is key, and Death on the Nile was released in February 2022, when it had to deal with not only the ongoing impact of the pandemic but also the negative PR of abuse allegations recently levelled against one of its stars, Armie Hammer.

Given that older audiences have been especially slow to return to cinemas since the pandemic, and they're unquestionably one of the movie's prime demographics, it's easy to see why Nile performed so much worse than its predecessor.

Even so, that's a disastrous return-on-investment, and many analysts initially assumed that it would spell the end for Branagh's film series.

And yet, Disney evidently appreciated the many unfortunate factors working against it, and so decided to proceed with a third movie, A Haunting in Venice.

It's been widely assumed that Nile performed well on streaming, likely contributing to Disney's decision to greenlight the threequel, albeit with a sensibly smaller $60 million budget and lesser reliance on VFX.

And the gamble mostly paid off - Venice grossed $122.3 million globally. Not an amazing result, but a decent enough return on its budget, especially when you factor in the presumably massive VOD revenue. Whether a fourth film happens or not, though, is entirely up in the air.