5 Famous Movies That Are Getting Unspeakably Bad Sequels

Jordan will play a rich kid called Adonis (seriously), who, "despite his parents' objections, wants nothing more than to follow in his grandfather's footsteps," according to SlashFilm. So he'll ... be repeatedly bested by a monosyllabic palooka from south Philly and then murdered by a blonde, even less-syllabic communist? Probably not, but it's still worrying that the plot sounds like a complete reversal of the "underdog gets a shot at glory" formula that makes Rocky good -- it's kind of hard to root for a chiseled, trust-fund kid named after the Greek god of beauty to get the girl and have his dreams come true.

One thing you can count on is another appearance by a grizzled, decrepit trainer, only this time that part will be played by Sylvester Stallone, who is also "substantially involved in the writing process" (so expect a lot of "yo's"), according to director Ryan Coogler. And sure, Sly has written some good stuff, but keep in mind that his entire body of work is ... let's say a mixed bag:

Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures
We're still waiting for the movie about Tony Manero's dancing rival's nephew's optometrist.

Yep, possibly the most stupefying information to come out of the Sony hacking debacle could be the emails between Sony co-chair Amy Pascal and Jonah Hill, in which there is serious consideration given to merging the 21 Jump Street and Men in Black franchises. In the emails, Hill describes the bizarre concept as "clean and rad and powerful," which suggests he may have been suffering from overexposure to Seth Rogen's secondhand smoke.

Nonetheless, "21 Men From Jump Street Who Are Also Wearing Black" appears to be under serious consideration, with an exec admitting, "We don't have a script yet, so we'll be greenlighting the movie off the concept and the talent involved."

Channing Tatum
Pictured: The talent.

We can't imagine anyone who saw Men in Black 3 thinking the concept could possibly be milked any further, but it's easy to see the appeal for the studio -- not only can they continue making crappy sequels but also combine those sequels with other sequels to increase the potential output of crap by a factor of thousands. Win-win!

Of course, there's always the possibility that some of that Jump magic will rub off on whoever ends up directing this thing (so far, Phil Lord and Chris Miller are in only as producers) and it'll actually be good. That could happen, right?

Channing Tatum

What does this mean? That, in all likelihood, the new movie won't reach theaters until at least 2020, at which point its non-rebooted star will be 78 years old.

Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty
He still hates snakes, but now he loves the breakfast buffet at Golden Corral.

Keep in mind that Harrison Ford is not in reality a swashbuckling, whip-cracking space smuggler. He's just a normal man, and an increasingly fragile one at that. He recently broke his leg while harrumphing around inside the Millennium Falcon for the new Star Wars. So it's probably safe to assume that there won't be much in the way of whitewater raft escapes or tank-back riding for him in the sequel, unless there's room in the budget for replacing at least a dozen dead, elderly stuntmen gathered from local rest homes.

There actually is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay: the original date just so happens to coincide with the releases of the new Star Wars movie (and the latest Mission: Impossible Tom Cruise karate-runfest is set to open a week later). So, yeah, that was probably a good move. On top of that, Hanks/Howard's Angels & Demons performed "decently" but didn't exactly give the bigwigs high hopes regarding the franchise's longevity. And on top of that, Inferno is essentially a do-over -- the original plan was to film an adaptation of another hoobajoob-filled Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol, but that idea seems to be swirling down the toilet because screenwriter after screenwriter (including Brown himself) has failed to come up with an acceptable script.

Doubleday
"Who writes this crap?" -the guy who writes this crap.

So now it's Inferno, with David "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" Koepp as the writer. Does this mean this is the one where we find out aliens are behind the Illuminati? We can only hope.

That idea is looking increasingly feasible after the hacking clusterfuck revealed the depths of Sony's desperation: while they were still assuring people that ASM 3 was definitely coming out in 2018, they were considering restarting the series as an animated comedy and/or lending the character to Marvel, who would introduce a new Peter Parker in Captain America 3. Either way, Andrew Garfield should probably start looking for a new job.

If there's one consolation, it's that, according to a leaked document called "Rebooting Spider-Man," even the executives are fucking tired of superhero origin stories. Hopefully this means they're finally starting at source material more recent than 1973, and we can maybe see something interesting out of the massive canon of Spidey stories.

Marvel Comics
Come on, Sony. Do the right thing.

While you're here, check out 5 Huge Upcoming Movies That Are Completely Doomed and 4 Bad Movies That Were Hilariously Sure of a Sequel.