FranchiseKilling

via Paramount If a movie bombs so hard that it loses $120 million at the box office to potentially draw a line under a once-mighty franchise that’s been defined more by failure than success for decades, which then ends up being blasted by the very people who starred in it, has the project in question been unfairly treated? The answer is a hard no, but Terminator: Dark Fate star Gabriel Luna disagrees. The Last of Us and FUBAR veteran played the primary antagonist in the legacy sequel, which came burdened by…

via Sony Despite the franchise stretching out across four films released almost a quarter of a century apart that racked up a cumulative box office haul of over $1.9 billion, it wouldn’t be unfair to say there’s only one good Men in Black movie. Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1997 original is a cosmic buddy caper for the ages, with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones proving to be inspired casting in a certifiable smash hit that won massive critical acclaim before instantly taking its place among the pantheon of all-time…

Image via Universal Pictures When Rob Zombie first announced plans to create a Munsters reboot and introduce the kooky narrative to an entirely new generation, an abundance of eyes immediately rolled in unison. Nevertheless, the ever-unorthodox horror director trudged on and crafted The Munsters — a wacky modern-day retelling of the classic ‘60s sitcom which reached a larger audience after its release on Netflix. In the space of almost a year, Zombie’s bizarre retelling has been criticized, praised, favored,…

via Warner Bros. The rule of Hollywood is that if a smash hit movie gets followed up by an even more successful sequel, further installments are all-but-guaranteed. And yet, the opposite proved to be true in the case of Journey to the Center of the Earth, although we suspect that Dwayne Johnson is at least partly to blame. After all, scheduling conflicts ruled Brendan Fraser out of the second chapter, with The Rock stepping in to continue their tenuous association that saw them both appear in The Mummy and…

In one of those strange coincidences Hollywood loves to throw up from time to time, 2010 was the year of the “older generation ensemble action movie starring Bruce Willis,” with The Expendables and Red releasing just weeks apart. Outside of sharing use of the Die Hard icon, both casts were equally stacked to the rafters with big names and bigger biceps, and they each got a sequel after succeeding at the box office. However, whereas Sylvester Stallone’s Barney Ross and the gang will return next year for their fourth…

via 20th Century Fox The 2010s saw almost every YA literary series adapted for the big screen, and an alarming number of them failed to make it past the first hurdle after bombing spectacularly at the box office. By the admittedly low standards of the time, then, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and sequel Sea of Monsters combining to earn almost $430 million at the box office was a minor triumph. In spite of such moderate commercial success, fans were less than thrilled at the huge…

via Paramount After becoming only the second video game adaptation in history to turn a decent-sized profit at the box office, it was inevitable that Angelina Jolie would return as the PlayStation icon in a sequel to 2001’s smash hit Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Sure enough, second installment The Cradle of Life entered production not long after the dust had settle on the first chapter’s theatrical run, with the two entries in the short-lived franchise releasing 25 months apart. However, the console-based…