If there's one thing that cinema lovers have learned from Hollywood over the years, it's that an announcement of an upcoming sequel doesn't actually mean audiences will ever get to see it. There are so many inherent aspects riding on a sequel's development, after all, and any number of issues can derail a project faster than you can say "Hellboy 3." That's to say, getting a follow-up project off of the ground and into the production stages doesn't guarantee anything; it doesn't matter whether you're Steven Spielberg or Uwe Boll - until the movie actually begins shooting, there's no way to fully ensure that it'll ever make it into theatres (and even then there's still a slight risk that it'll never see the light of day). Which means that a hefty number of sequels that have been announced by major studios over the past couple of years have fallen by the wayside and are now trapped in that terrifying place that no film ever wants to find itself, known as "development hell" (though the studios prefer to refer to this process as "shelving," in case they change their minds). Here, then, are 10 film sequels you probably didn't know had been shelved - doomed, forevermore, to feature on internet lists highlighting follow-ups that never got made...
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
