10 Movies That Weren't Meant To Be Sequels

As entertaining as Speed was, the director, Jan De Bont, believed it was a story that could only work once. 

But after the action thriller swept the box office, De Bont was contractually obliged to make another. Hundreds of ideas were thrown around, but De Bont went with his own vision, which involved an out-of-control cruise ship crashing into an island.

Although De Bont claimed this story came to him in a dream, Die Hard director, John McTiernan, stated many of Speed 2: Cruise Control's ideas stemmed from another source. In an interview with Movieline, McTiernan claimed the plot was based on a 1990 script called Troubleshooter, which involved a hero battling terrorists on a cruise ship. McTiernan considered using the script for the third Die Hard but abandoned the idea, believing the premise had been done in 1992's Under Siege. After the infernal script shuffled around Hollywood for seven years, it finally fell into Jan De Bont's lap, who retooled it for Speed 2.

Much like the vessel itself, the unwanted sequel crashed and burned at a lethargic pace. Cruise Control - which did away with star of the original Speed, Keanu Reeves - was annihilated by critics, tanked at theatres, and tarnished Jan De Bont's promising filmmaking career. With the benefit of hindsight, the director was spot-on when he said Speed should've been a one-and-done.