6 Movie Franchises That Were Saved By A Reboot (And 6 That Were Doomed)

In an impressively stupid feat of 'trying to run faster than Usain Bolt before you can even walk', The Mummy didn't just kill a wannabe franchise at the first hurdle; it killed an entire cinematic universe. Remember The Dark Universe? Universal certainly hopes you don't, because they've already brushed it under the carpet and teamed up with Blumhouse, with The Invisible Man set for release next year.

First-time director and writer/producer of uninspired genre films Alex Kurtzman was way out of his depth on the $150m project, and to the surprise of virtually nobody Tom Cruise (i.e: the biggest movie star in the world who was contractually given creative control over virtually every aspect of production) was frequently overruling him on set and vetoing Kurtzman's ideas.

The movie may have made over $400m at the box office, but still resulted in a loss for Universal, and in the wake of incredibly negative reviews the studio quickly abandoned the entire notion of The Dark Universe despite already having confidently announced that The Bride of Frankenstein, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Phantom of the Opera were all in active development. Oops.