10 Movie Franchises That Made The Same Mistake TWICE
3. Ditching Frank Grillo - The Purge
Though The Purge franchise got off to a shaky start, it found its firm footing in the second and third movies, where Frank Grillo was installed as the gruffly badass, Punisher-esque hero Leo Barnes.
While threequel The Purge: Election Year seemed to be setting up a fourth movie where Leo would get caught in the middle of a new American Civil War, the filmmakers decided to instead follow up with a prequel, The First Purge, outlining the origins of Purge Night.
As such, Grillo was nowhere to be seen, yet fans nevertheless assumed that his Leo would return for the fifth once the franchise returned to the modern timeline.
But no dice - though The Forever Purge took place after Election Year, Leo was bafflingly absent without explanation, as disappointed many who view the second and third films as by far the series' strongest.
Though Grillo has suggested that he'll be back for an in-the-works sixth movie, one has to wonder if audiences will still be invested in his return considering that he hasn't appeared in the franchise since 2016, and The Purge 6 won't release until 2024 at the very earliest.
While The Purge movies are produced on small enough budgets that it's near-impossible for them not to turn a profit, introducing fans to a badass protagonist and then benching him for two straight movies was a huge mistake creatively speaking.