10 Movie Franchises That Died In 2022

Hollywood can be a cruel and unpredictable beast, where no matter how cool or interesting a project looks, it just might not work, or audiences may not turn up to see it.

Building a movie franchise sure is hard work, given the sheer number of moving parts required to deliver a single successful film, let alone an ongoing universe that keeps them coming back for more.

As such it's little surprise that so many franchises end up running out of steam or even failing to take flight at all, especially in the dicey post-pandemic box office climate where audiences are generally favouring comforting familiarity over startling originality.

But 2022 proved that even apparent sure things aren't safe, as several massive blockbuster franchises were effectively given the chop due to their lacklustre commercial performance.

Elsewhere a number of prospective IP failed to make a splash and have been nixed right out of the gate, ensuring that despite the film industry's continuing recovery, the past year has been a brutal slaughterhouse for so many major movie series.

There are surely some big lessons to be learned here, though it remains to be seen if Hollywood will actually appreciate why these franchises died...

It can't be understated how, on paper, the Fantastic Beasts franchise seemed like it couldn't miss - a Harry Potter spin-off centered around magical creatures? What's not to like?

And though the first film grossed a solid $814 million globally, 2018's sequel Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald tapered off amid a wildly mixed fan response to some of its storytelling decisions, netting "just" $654.8 million.

That film's cliffhanger ending especially soured many, and so enthusiasm wasn't particularly high for threequel The Secrets of Dumbledore.

That's without getting into Johnny Depp's Grindelwald being recast with Mads Mikkelsen, public pushback against J.K. Rowling for her comments about the trans community, and audiences now being conditioned to wait for streaming for movies they're not totally buzzing to watch right away.

The Secrets of Dumbledore was released in April and, alongside mixed reviews, netted a wildly disappointing $405.1 million worldwide, which against a $200 million budget brought it dangerously close to being an outright bomb.

In the months that followed there was much speculation on the franchise's future, and though there's not been any formal confirmation yet, industry insiders claim that Fantastic Beasts is "effectively dead," with a debt-saddled Warner Bros. seeing little viability in continuing the series.

The studio is apparently more interested in pursuing a two-part adaptation of Rowling's Potter sequel play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, though it's tough to imagine the principal Potter cast returning, especially given many of their outspoken remarks about Rowling's own controversial comments.