9 Movie Franchises That Awkwardly Continued When Their Stars Bailed

3. Queen of the Damned (2002)

Queen of the Damned When it was first announced that Tom Cruise was going to play Lestat in the movie adaptation of Anne Rice's cult novel Interview with The Vampire, fans of the book - and Rice herself - complained that he wasn't right for the role. In the end, Cruise genuinely pulled it off and everybody apologised for being so bloody mean before they actually saw him in the movie. By the time it was time for a sequel, though, Cruise had moved on to other things. Which made room for Stewart Townsend, who certainly looks the part of Lestat, but couldn't really pull it off. Queen of the Damned wasn't really even a movie that anybody was looking forward to when it came out, but it still did pretty good business at the box office - a shame it did nothing else but sort of predict the Twilight-y aspects of vampire movies that we've all grown accustomed to dealing with these days. Also: very bad accents.
Contributor

All-round pop culture obsessive.