10 Horror Franchises That Ended Too Soon

6. Piranha

Not the Joe Dante and James Cameron-directed original franchise. Not the Roger Corman-produced made-for-TV offering of the '90s. No, the Piranha franchise that we needed to see more from was the Piranha franchise of more recent years.

Crawl director Alexandre Aja helmed the camp, cheesy, and extremely bloody Piranha 3D of 2010, and that was in turn followed up in 2012 by John Gulager's Piranha 3DD. We're both movies stone cold classics of their time? Absolutely not. Were both movies gratuitously gory and insanely over-the-top? Hell yes.

One of the things about the horror genre that makes it so great, is that there is a place in horror for so many different types of projects. Some of those projects may be looking towards awards season, others may be about changing the genre itself, and others are designed to be nothing but dumb fun.

Piranha clearly falls into that latter section, but you know exactly what you're going to get from such a picture. There'll be a brisk 90-minute run time, there'll be lots of deaths, there'll be lots of things that absolutely do not make logical sense, and there'll be a long-suffering protagonist standing tall at the end of the feature.

Horror doesn't always have to be chin stroking and thought-provoking. And for that reason, there seems like there's been so much left on the table with the Piranha franchise.

Andrew Pollard

Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.

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