20 Film Franchises That Were Cancelled After One Movie

1. The Mummy

Flash Gordon
Universal

Alex Kurtzman's The Mummy was meant to launch not just a franchise, but an entire cinematic universe. It was intended to be the springboard to reboot all of Universal's iconic monsters including Frankenstein's Monster, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Instead of testing the waters first, Universal torpedoed in, casting A-List actors in future movies before The Mummy was even released.

Despite all this bluster, the 2017 version of The Mummy was irredeemable garbage. The plot was nonsensical, the CGI was appalling, and the performances were cringeworthy. The worst thing is that the film refused to tell a self-contained story and instead, shoehorned in references to future movies that never came to be.

Although the DCEU gets a lot of flack for coping Marvel, no one did it as shamefully as The Mummy. Russell Crowe's Dr Jekyll is such a lazy rip-off of Marvel's Nick Fury, he might as well be wearing an eyepatch. The only positive thing that came out of the whole experience is future franchises will learn from this film's mistakes since The Mummy is the perfect example how NOT to set up a cinematic universe.

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James Egan has been with Whatculture for five years and prominently works on Horror, Film, and Video Games. He's written over 80 books including 1000 Facts about Horror Movies Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about The Greatest Films Ever Made Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about Video Games Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts About James Bond 1000 Facts About TV Shows