10 Movies That Bombed So Hard They Killed The Sequel
5. Batman & Robin
Batman & Robin didn't just send the Dark Knight's big screen franchise into hibernation for the best part of a decade, it almost killed the comic book genre entirely. Blade arrived the following year while superhero movies were still on life support, but it wouldn't be until the turn of the millennium that the stench of Joel Schumacher's neon and nipples extravaganza was truly erased from the public consciousness.
The desire to sell toys clearly outweighed the desire to make a good movie, and you can almost feel the grubby fingerprints of a merchandise-obsessed studio leaking out of Batman & Robin's every pore. You can barely even tell that this is a continuation of a series that started with Tim Burton's 1989 original, and we weren't even in Kansas anymore, never mind Gotham.
The acting, the dialogue and the action were all beyond terrible in a movie so overblown and over the top that it would have made Adam West blush, and it was more than a little ironic that Batman & Robin's disappointing box office performance killed not only the Caped Crusader's proposed fifth adventure, but also contributed to the demise of Tim Burton's Superman Lives.