This might not shock you that Hollywood has an obsession over franchises. They love making movies that are low risk with built in audience but sometimes that love of safety can backfire. Here are 5 such instances of potential franchises that ended up stopping at just one movie.
1) Van Helsing
Van Helsing is an action-adventure film directed by Stephen Sommers. The movie took the character of Gabriel Van Helsing from Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel and imagined him as an adventurous monster hunter. The movie failed to launch the franchise universal. It was loud, dumb, extreme, and worst of all pretty cheesy. The execution of the movie fell pretty flat.
2) John Carter
Transforming a classic hero from one of the most acclaimed writers of all time sounds like that it is the perfect for a movie franchise. That was just what Disney was planning on when they attempted to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars. It was meant to be the very first part of the trilogy but while the character had influenced a lot of popular fiction.
3) The Mortal Instruments city of Bones
The Mortal Instruments city of Bones is based on the first novel of the popular young adult series. The film received overwhelmingly negative responses from critics and not much better from the movie goers. The film managed to take in only 30 million dollars at the box-office in the US and 80 million worldwide.
4) Master and Commander: The First side of the world
Master and Commander: The First side of the world is based on the popular novel by Patrick O’Brien. Despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews and earning ten Oscar nominations, the film failed to attract younger moviegoers.
5) Green Lantern
While the Dark Knight trilogy was incredibly successful. DC couldn’t use the Batman movies to launch other properties the way that Marvel have been able to do so. The movie told the original story of Green Lantern but couldn’t match the expectations.
