13 Broken Comic Book Movie Franchises (And How To Fix Them)

6. Wanted

Wanted blazed onto screens in 2008, a year that also saw the birth of the MCU with Iron Man and the release of the then most successful comic adaptation of all-time The Dark Knight. Despite the strength of the competition, or perhaps as a result of it, Wanted was an unexpected success. The film seemed a perfect storm of strong elements and the stage should really have been set for a franchise to be born: box office takings in excess of $300 million, critical praise for its high-tempo action, a firmly established world, and a break-out star as the lead. It did suffer from killing two of its name-actor characters, but in the comic book world this has never been a real barrier, which was later proved rather succinctly with the initial announcement of Angelina Jolie and her character Fox's return for the sequel. Jolie departure from the project in 2010 seems to have been the event that sent the Wanted sequel plunging into developmental hell. Despite this though, and the other problems the makers have clearly encountered, discussion of a Wanted sequel still continues as James McAvoy found during the press for Days Of Future Past, where he was questioned on the subject, and intimated that he would still like to do it. The suggestion is that McAvoy's Wesley Gibson would take on the recruitment-style role of Fox, and the story would involve him mentoring a female assassin, in a gender-reversal of the original, which would seem to be an appropriate way to continue the series. With McAvoy's profile now a lot higher than it was, there is every chance of the Jolie-factor no longer being an issue, and this could now come to fruition.