There’s a certain risk that comes with making a film series — though the modern “franchise absolutely everything” model most production studios seem to be using might make you think otherwise. It’s impossible to tell if a movie will be a success worthy of even one follow-up until the day it comes out, which means that planning and budgeting for more is always something of a gamble. Sometimes the gamble pays off and we get cinematic universes galore. Other times movies that were meant to kick off grand sagas end up being the only installment we’ll ever see.
There are those semi-successful movie series that fall somewhere in the middle of these two phenomena. Some films are so well-received that sequels are greenlit immediately, and some of those sequels are so great they make another sequel, and that sequel is… uhh, not so great, and so any plans to make any more films in that world are scrapped so fast it’s like they never existed. The world of movies is littered with these incomplete narratives, would-be trilogies and quadrilogies and beyond that, for one reason or another, were never allowed to make it to their grand finales.
Those reasons usually boil down to: The last one just didn’t make enough money. It’s unfair, especially when the movies end up being really good despite the fact that no one shows up for them, but sometimes there’s just nothing to be done. All of the movies on this list got at least one sequel and one planned follow-up that languished in limbo before it was finally scrapped. Whether you loved or hated the later installments, it would have been nice to see how it all turned out.
10 Popular Movie Series That Were Never Finished
We’ll never know how these series were supposed to end.
Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
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Mega-Hit Movies That Nobody Likes
These movies all rank among the highest-grossing titles in history. That does not necessarily mean that audiences like them, or remember them fondly.