If there's one thing that makes Hollywood executives see dollar signs it's the prospect of a long, successful movie franchise. Ever since the days of the early studio system, episodic movie serials such as Buck Rogers and Tarzan were incredibly popular draws, guaranteed to fill the coffers of movie moguls as much as they filled cinemas. While the concept of the franchise died down in the post-war years, the advent of Star Wars soon kicked it back into gear, and today it's impossible to go to a multiplex without a significant majority of films on show belonging to one franchise or another. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," Hollywood seems to be saying, even if the number of lacklustre sequels out there suggests otherwise. Not all franchises make it past the first movie, and sometimes a major studio pumps a huge sum of money into a project only to watch it descend into an uncontrollable mess. Sometimes it's a real shame when this happens, but more often than not you can't help but wonder why no one pointed out what a bad idea the proposed franchise was in the first place. From movies which completely missed the tone of the source material on which they were based, to ones based on ageing properties which no one can remember, here are ten frachises that were doomed to fail.
