6. A Nightmare on Elm Street
One, two, Freddy’s not getting another franchise. Wait, was that how the rhyme went? Wes Craven’s 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street can really be accredited to saving New Line Cinemas. Prior to the film’s release, the studio was out of money and A Nightmare on Elm Street was their final gamble. However it was a gamble that paid off in spades and the movie’s burnt-faced monster Freddy Kruger quickly found himself a pop culture icon. He would star in another five outings ending with 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, which was intended to set up Freddy vs. Jason, a movie that would have seen the dream demon take on the hockey mask-wearing psycho from the Friday the 13th series. But with that movie struggling to get out of the gates (it would be in development for around 14 years), Wes Craven reinvented the character with his divisive Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Following the eventual release of Freddy vs. Jason in 2004, Kruger would find himself being rebooted in 2010’s poorly received A Nightmare on Elm Street. While a moderate success at the box office ($115 million worldwide), a sequel was never put into production most likely due to the overwhelming negative feedback from fans, movie goers and critics. It was announced a couple of months ago that Freddy would be getting another reboot, and will have no connections to the Jackie Earl Hayley-starring remake. And speaking of horror reboots…
7. Friday the 13th
Like Freddy, Jason Voorhees has quite the cinematic track record. The first Friday the 13th movie is attributed to the slasher boom of the early 1980s, and the subsequent sequels (which did feature Jason, though not in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning), were very popular amongst horror fans and movie goers. By 1993, the series was brought to a close with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (again so they could work towards the troubled Freddy vs. Jason) and the character would be on ice until 2001’s Jason X. After the mega success of Freddy vs. Jason, Friday the 13th was given the reboot treatment in 2009. Like the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot, the movie was successful and brought in $65 million domestically against a $19 million budget. And again like the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot, a sequel was never brought to life. Fans did like this new version of Jason more than they liked the new Freddy, but it wasn’t enough to convince Warner Bros. to give the go-ahead for another trip to Crystal Lake. Due to a partnership deal with Paramount for the release of Christoper Nolan’s Interstellar, Friday the 13th has found its way back to Paramount for a new franchise reboot that won’t connect to the 2009 version.
8. The Amazing Spider-Man
When Sam Raimi fell out with Sony over the direction for Spider-Man 4, the decision was made for the Wall Crawler to be given the reboot treatment with 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. While not a critical darling or popular with comic book fans who rejected its Twilight mentality, the movie made $260 million domestically and $495 million worldwide. A sequel was quickly announced for 2014 and suddenly Spider-Man found himself at the centre of a Spidey Universe that would feature two more sequels, a Sinister Six spin-off film and an outing for classic villains Venom and Carnage. Sadly for Sony, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was not the mega hit they’d hoped it would be. The movie made less than its predecessor and was received poorly by critics and fans. By the tail end of 2014, it was revealed that Sony and Marvel Studios had been in talks for the character to cross over into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was then officially announced in February 2015. All plans for the Spidey-verse were cancelled as the franchise heads for its second reboot in just over a decade. Though this is probably for the best, as Dennis Leary said that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 would have involved his character being brought back from the dead…
9. Terminator Salvation/Terminator: Genysis
“Hey, remember that low budget horror movie from 1984 that was really successful which spawned an even bigger sequel in 1991? Do you think there’s still life left in that franchise?” Well, based off the last three movies, no. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was less of a close to the Terminator franchise and more of a farewell to Arnold Schwarzenegger as he left our cinema screens to try and sink California as Governor. But that didn’t stop the reboot machine from turning. Due to some very complicated contractual loopholes, the franchise found its way to The Halcyon Company, who put a franchise reboot into production. Terminator Salvation was designed to start a new trilogy of movies that would see John Connor fighting the war against Skynet as he helps train Kyle Reese to go back to 1984 and save his mother. The film was not well received, and wasn’t that successful at the box office either. With a massive budget of $200 million, Terminator Salvation made just $125 million domestically and $246 million worldwide. The proposed trilogy was scrapped and The Halcyon Company went out of business shortly thereafter, leaving The Terminator once again without a franchise. That was until 2011 when Annapura Pictures picked up the rights to the franchise with plans to make another new trilogy of Terminator movies, this time bringing back Arnold Schwarzenegger to his most famous of roles. The result was the rather derided Terminator: Genisys released earlier this year. The film was panned by critics for having a plot that made little-to-no-sense and it didn’t fare much better at the box office. With a terrible opening of just $30.5 million, Terminator: Genisys managed just $89 million domestically. Its worldwide release – including a huge opening in China – helped pull the flailing movie to $440 million in total, but it has put a rather dubious cloud over the next two movies. Initial reports said that the new trilogy was scrapped once again, but the producers insist they are just placing it on “indefinite hold” while they work out where to take the series next. In the movie world, “indefinite hold” means it’s being canned.
10. Fantastic Four
Our final failure is also the most recent, but it’s one that really came as no surprise. For some reason, the Internet jumped onto Josh Trank’s dark-and-serious take on Marvel’s First Family, and branded Fantastic Four a failure before a single frame was shot. These complaints were exacerbated with the controversial casting of Michael B. Jordan as The Human Torch, and then reports started to surface that the film was in deep trouble due to a stressful production. As the film was nearing its release, Josh Trank dismissed the movie via Twitter and blamed 20th Century Fox for the poor previews. It was later revealed that Trank was shut out of the edit suite and a whole new ending was filmed in order to save the film. The audience responded in kind. With a rather pathetic domestic take of just $56 million against a $120 million budget, Fantastic Four suddenly became the most talked about movie of 2015 for all the wrong reasons. Even factoring worldwide earnings of $110 million, Fantastic Four was a box office flop. Producer and writer Simon Kinberg claims that a second film could still happen, but other rumours suggest that it will be scrapped in place of Deadpool 2 and that the characters are heading to Marvel Studios for a new reboot in 2020.
Are there any you felt we left off the list? Let us know in the comments below.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
