10 Reasons Horror Sequels Haven't Happened Yet
6. Gabriel Bateman's Age - Lights Out 2
David F. Sandberg's 2016 debut Lights Out - based on his own viral short of the same name - was a stonking box office success, grossing just shy of $150 million worldwide on a $5 million budget.
It didn't take long for Warner Bros. to announce a sequel with Sandberg and screenwriter Eric Heisserer both set to return, but we're now nine years removed from the first film's release and seemingly no closer to Lights Out 2.
You can absolutely point to Sandberg being kept busy with the Shazam! movies in recent years, but in 2023 he revealed that the sequel has been held up by another complication - the age of lead actor Gabriel Bateman.
Bateman appeared in the film as protagonist Rebecca's (Teresa Palmer) young half-brother Martin, and the original script for Lights Out 2 picked up with Martin still a young boy.
This obviously wouldn't work due to the natural passage of time, with Bateman now being 20 years old, meaning that the current draft of the script would need some serious refinements.
While that sounds like a fixable problem given how commercially successful the first movie was, Warner Bros. may ultimately feel that too much time has passed since the original, and that the window of opportunity to exploit the first film's success closed long ago.