15 Movies That Sucked So Hard They Murdered Their Own Sequels

The 2017 The Mummy was meant to kickstart a shared universe based on Universal Monsters, including remakes of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. However, due to it being absolutely garbage, the whole multi-movie plan was shelved indefinitely. 

2013’s The Lone Ranger was intended as a franchise-starter like Jerry Bruckheimer, Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp’s previous collaboration, Pirates of the Caribbean. However, the lengthy run time, Depp playing a Native American and an inconsistent tone nixed that idea. 

A Battleship movie was a hell of a swing, but there were high hopes, including a sequel teased at the end. However, damning reviews, dismal domestic box-office returns and the unstoppable Avengers out at the same time sank all of those hopes. 

The Deadpool movies have had fun pointing out how shitty Green Lantern was, but damn, it’s shitty. Nonetheless, a sequel script was written before it came out, and only after bad reviews and dick-all money were trilogy plans totally abandoned. 

While still filming Batman & Robin, Joel Schumacher was hired to direct a follow-up, Batman Unchained, featuring every villain from the four-movie franchise returning in a Scarecrow-induced hallucination. When Batman & Robin was almost universally hated, everything was spiked.

The Battlefield Earth movie only covers the first 400 pages of the 1,000-page book, so a sequel was written into everyone’s contract. Sadly, 600 pages will remain unfilmed as the resulting movie was legendarily a fat load of toilet.

The final shot of Independence Day: Resurgence sets up a sequel that will likely never come due, ironically, to terrible reviews often focusing on how desperate the movie seemed to set up a series of sequels.

Cannon Films were determined to make a Masters of the Universe sequel, and had a script all ready, but the film’s poor box-office take led to a tricky situation with Mattel. The sets and costumes were instead used for the awesome Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Cyborg. 

The third book in the Divergent trilogy was to be split into two movies, a la Harry Potter and Twilight. However, the first part of it made so little money that the second was canceled — three books, three films, a greedily incomplete story. Dicks. 

There are 12 Assassin’s Creed games, and hopes for a giant big-screen franchise. Despite Michael Fassbender doing his best in the hoodie, the film was deeply, deeply boring. The sequels were scrapped, and everyone had to console themselves (game joke!).

While John Carter didn’t actually suck, it cost so much money to make that it didn’t just have to not suck to succeed, it had to be a phenomenon. A trilogy had always been planned, plans that got thrown into the trash when nobody went to see it. 

The six Mortal Instruments books were set for long-running big-screen success, but only one film was made — City of Bones made little enough impact that, after kicking the can down the road promising sequels would still happen, everyone just gave up instead. 

The six Percy Jackson books made it two movies into their big-screen adaptation, but no further — the second was seen as unremarkable, by-the-numbers filler, compared unfavorably to Harry Potter. The rights later changed hands, confirming it was all over. 

The Jumper filmmakers were very ambitious, working on a multi-film story and setting up several plot lines for future installments. A 15 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and reviews with words like “uncharismatic” and “incoherent” killed that, though.

Another YA series with ready-made franchise potential, I Am Number Four was like a sci-fi Twilight. Ten books were planned, and as many movies as they could make. That number was one — it lost shit-tons of money and sucked. D’oh!