7 Movie Franchises That Were Denied Trilogies For Way Too Long

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There’s just something so unsatisfying about a two-film franchise. It can only work if it’s intended to be one story split into two parts, like The Godfather (yes, The Godfather Part III does exist, but it wasn’t part of the original plan). With three movies you just get the feeling that the story has been told in full, but when you get just two movies it’s as if the franchise had its fire extinguished just as it was starting to grow. The following franchises have all faced such a fate. Some will likely never get a true continuation while others had to wait 20 or so years. Regardless, for a long time, they carried that distinct unsatisfying air.

7) Tim Story’s Fantastic Four Movies

Image Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Tim Story’s two Fantastic Four movies are breezy, family friendly fun but nothing more. Whatever depth they attempt to have lands with a thud outside Thing’s storyline in the first one. Even still, they have a certain charm these days, especially considering how Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was the last pre-MCU Marvel movie.

When Iron Man came along any hope for early aughts franchises to continue was more or less extinguished outside the X-Men, and it didn’t help that the budget was raised for Silver Surfer yet it yielded a softer return. Fans will just have to be satisfied with Chris Evans’ cameo as the Human Torch in Deadpool & Wolverine.

6) 300

image courtesy of warner bros. pictures

300 was a pop culture juggernaut. Stylish and buoyed by a star-making turn from Gerard Butler, it was a movie of the moment. Seven years later, 300: Rise of an Empire retained much of its style but, because everyone in the first movie was dead, the audience didn’t really latch onto it as a must-see.

Even after nearly a decade of inflation it made about $130 million less than its more modestly budgeted predecessor. It’s a shame because, while it doesn’t feel wholly necessary, Rise of an Empire is a worthy expansion of the first film’s lore.

5) Hellboy

image courtesy of columbia pictures

Hellboy is a case of both audiences and critics responding positively to something. However, while a recognizable enough IP, it’s still more on the niche side. In other words, the audience that was responding positively wasn’t big enough. The original was a studio superhero movie with a fairly restrained $66 million budget that still didn’t manage to crack $100 million worldwide. Even still, it got a sequel in 2008, which was an improvement over its predecessor both in terms of quality and financial reception. However, its $169 million haul against an $85 million price tag still indicated it wasn’t much of a moneymaker.

The lack of a third Guillermo del Toro Hellboy is an especially crushing one. If the price tag had been dialed back a bit it could have made enough money to justify its existence in 2010 or 2011. But now here we are with an atrocious and unpleasant failed 2019 reboot and another, small-scale reboot that was widely dismissed in 2024. So there clearly was awareness of a market for these movies, but what’s similarly clear is that the market really wanted round three of del Toro and Ron Perlman.

4) Gremlins

image courtesy of warner bros.

It’s not hard to figure out where things went wrong with Gremlins. The first film was a massive success in 1984, but its balance of horror and dark comedy is ironically both what makes it so good and what got it in trouble. It is, quite famously, one half of the reason why the PG-13 rating exists.

Then Gremlins 2: The New Batch was released in 1990 (with a PG-13 rating that it didn’t even deserve) with 95% of the horror extracted and 100% of the dark humor extracted. In their place was a movie that told the audience from moment one what it wanted to be: a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon. The issue with that was that parents were wary of taking their kids to a PG-13 movie, much less one that was following up an occasionally disturbing original. As for those who did show up, they didn’t get the experience the first movie had delivered. The New Batch has come to be appreciated in time, but it was still enough to put the franchise on ice. However, here we are now, with a third film finally set to release in November of 2027. It’s a fandom dream come to fruition, truly the Zack Snyder’s Justice League of nasty little booze-guzzling monster movies.

3) Kick-Ass

Image courtesy of Lionsgate

The first Kick-Ass movie was a case of everything falling into place exactly as it should. It adapted Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s comics in a way that captured their spirit but left out some of the nastiest stuff. It had to turn a profit in theaters, after all. It walked the required tightrope well.

Kick-Ass 2 didn’t. It, too, brought elements and storylines from the comics to the screen, but the balance was simply off. It had Hit-Girl making a peer poop her pants as well as Red Mist attempting to assault a young woman. Even still, while it was a big step down, it was entirely devoid of merit. But, if there were to be a third film, it was clear that Matthew Vaughn would need to return to direct it after sitting out round two.

2) Ghostbusters

image courtesy of columbia pictures

Like Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Ghostbusters II has come to be embraced by the IP’s fans. But at the time it was a pretty big disappointment. Even though it septupled its budget it still wasn’t the phenomenon the original film was, with many detractors pointing at its willingness to repeat story beats left and right.

And, while it’s far from a bad movie, its just-above-average nature was a letdown of a place to leave such an important film franchise. Then, 27 years later, Paul Feig came along with an ultimately misguided reboot that was too reliant on humor that never quite worked. It wasn’t until 32 years after Ghostbusters II that the franchise was finally genuinely continued, with (most of) the original gang reprising their roles and Jason Reitman stepping into the shoes once worn by his father, Ivan. Its sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, is on the overstuffed side, but Ghostbusters: Afterlife nonetheless managed to scratch the Ghostbusters itch that was long bothersome.

1) Tim Burton’s Batman Movies

image courtesy of warner bros.

Tim Burton’s two Batman movies are so good that it’s incredibly easy to binge watch them at least once a year. As soon as Batman ends you’re ready to hop right back into his version of Gotham with Batman Returns. But that latter film, which is an improvement over an already rock-solid predecessor, found itself pulling a Gremlins: it was a movie marketed to kids that scared the hell out of them.

We really needed a Burton helmed trilogy-capper. And what makes the fact we didn’t get one all the more painful is the two half-effective ways they were followed up. Batman Forever is fun ’90s blockbuster fluff, but its acknowledging that it takes place in the Burton universe while being almost entirely different is unsatisfying. Then, of course, Batman & Robin showed us just how far we had fallen from the Edward Scissorhands director’s grim and thematically poignant era. Then, of course, there’s Michael Keaton finally reprising his role in The Flash. It left everyone scratching their heads thinking, “After 31 years, that was all we got?” Then with the shelving of Batgirl the DCEU return all ended up feeling like just another gut punch.

Which other film franchises didn’t go on as long as they should have? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!