Sooner or later, every long-running franchise starts to get a little boring and stale. A lot of franchises just end there, some limp on and extort every available penny (*cough* Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow), and some say "what the hell" and just go completely insane. Strangely, this last option often results in an amazing film. Final Destination 5 is a good example of this. For a movie where Death itself is the main villain, the series was becoming way too serious and bogged down in the melodrama, so with part 5 the producers decided to go back to the roots of the series and go completely insane. That's why we got death by laser eye surgery, belt sander and I'm honestly being serious here Buddha statue. A sequel has to do the unenviable job of making something as good as (if not better than) the original, whilst also keeping the series fresh and giving the fans more of what they want. Producers have to be careful that they don't repeat themselves by making the exact same film again (see Hangover 2) but they also can't change too much or they risk alienating the audience (RoboCop 3). It's a very fine balancing act. However, there is another way. You could just make something completely mad and slap the title on it, using the luxury of already established characters to make a story that wouldn't ordinarily get made. Here's 8 films that did just that...
3rd Year Film and Television Production student at Edge Hill University. Writer of "Stockton's Last Stand" and screenwriter/director of "Hunted" and "Spyfail 2: The Search for Spyfail 1".
I also do stand-up comedy sometimes... I'm told I'm marginally funny.
