Trilogies that will sadly never get finished

If there's an unmade sequel out there that fans truly want to see, it's Hellboy III. Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army was released in July 2008, starring Ron Perlman as the eponymous hero. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and grossed over $160 million worldwide on an estimated $85 million production budget. Although the movie was a modest success for del Toro, it wasn't a monster hit. So Universal Pictures never commissioned a third installment.

Two years after Hellboy II released, del Toro told Rotten Tomatoes he was interested in potentially making another Hellboy movie after his aborted take on The Hobbit. Two years later, Perlman donned his Hellboy costume (full makeup and all) to visit a terminally ill child. That bit of kindness inspired del Toro to push for another film, telling Entertainment Weekly: "I can say publicly that now we are together in trying [to do Hellboy III]."

But years passed and nothing ever happened. Perlman said if Hellboy III were to happen, it would need to be twice as big as the previous two installments, which del Toro said would cost around $120 million to produce. Unfortunately, no studio is willing to put up that kind of money for a franchise that likely wouldn't crack $500 million. Still, del Toro is optimistic that if Pacific Rim 2 is successful, Legendary Pictures might finance Hellboy III. Perlman isn't so confident, and said there's little chance of Hellboy III happening.

Hope sprang eternal in January 2017 when del Toro polled Twitter users on whether they wanted Hellboy III, then had a couple meetings about it when everyone polled said "yes please." But by February, it was all over. Del Toro tweeted that he'd asked everyone and "100% the sequel will not happen. And that is to be the final thing about it."

It took almost 30 years, but Disney finally released a sequel to Steven Lisberger's cult hit Tron. Joseph Kosinski's Tron: Legacy, starring Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, released in 2010 to average critic reviews. And though the movie became a modest box office success, earning over $400 million worldwide on an estimated $170 million production budget, it wasn't enough for Disney to justify a third installment.

But the thing is, Tron: Legacy writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz had already begun working on a script for a third film before Legacy even released. Not long after Legacy hit, Ain't It Cool News reported that Disney was gearing up to announce Tron 3 — but the announcement never arrived. Instead, years and years of updates, promises, and delays ensued, with a new writer being brought on board due to Horowitz and Kitsis leaving to work on their ABC fantasy series Once Upon a Time.

Things were finally starting to look up when rumors swirled that production might ramp up in October 2015. Unfortunately, Disney decided not to move forward with Tron 3, which Wilde confirmed. Boxleitner soon expressed disinterest in continuing the franchise, too, after going through several production ups and downs. With Star Wars, Marvel, and countless fairy tale remakes, Boxleitner feels Disney is "going to play it safe with their old [formula]." Still, Hedlund believes there's a glimmer of hope. He told ComicBook.com: "I haven't been told it's totally dead," which admittedly isn't the strongest vote of confidence. But, he did suggest possibly continuing the series 30 years later, like Legacy did. While rumors swirl of Tron 3 eventually becoming a thing — produced by Justin Springer and possibly starring Jared Leto — we currently have naught but memories of the first two. Oh, and Kingdom Hearts II, which centered a whole level around Tron. It's a start.

Five years after Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later released in theaters, the sequel 28 Weeks Later arrived. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later depicts a NATO takeover of the U.K., where they supposedly quelled a zombie infestation. Unfortunately, one person infected with the virus survived and manages to spread it to the remaining survivors. At the end of the movie, a handful of survivors escape England and make it to France. However, one of them was still a carrier for the infection, and the movie's cliffhanger showed zombies running rampant in front of the Eiffel Tower, thus indicating the infection had spread across the channel.

Shortly after 28 Weeks Later released, Boyle indicated plans for a third installment were in the works. Unfortunately, screenwriter Alex Garland believed the rumored 28 Months Later movie wouldn't happen due to copyright issues: "When we made 28 Days Later, the rights were frozen between a group of people who are no longer talking to each other."

Boyle still wants to make a third movie, and he even has some ideas for what it would entail. He has declined to share any of his ideas because he worries, albeit jokingly, they might end up in an episode of The Walking Dead. But, Boyle and Garland are both up for making 28 Months Later — there are just several complications holding them back from moving forward. Still, they have hope.

Quentin Tarantino has a unique approach to filmmaking, which is evident in his films like Reservoir Dogs, The Hateful Eight, and of course, the Kill Bill series. He is also a director who likes to make one story at a time, moving from one project to another without sequelizing. However, just a few short months prior to Kill Bill releasing in theaters, Tarantino and Miramax concluded that the four-hour film would have to be split into two releases. Thus Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2 were born.

Although they aren't his most commercially successful films, the two-part grindhouse homage has become a cult hit in the years since its release. The second film ends on a solid note, with Bill dying and Beatrix and B.B. leaving together. However, Tarantino believes there is always room for more. In 2004, he indicated plans to make a Volume 3 with Uma Thurman reprising her role as Beatrix Kiddo. But Tarantino said he would probably wait around 15 years before making another one.

Tarantino said he planned on making another installment (and maybe even a fourth one), with the story potentially focusing on "the revenge of two killers whose arms and eye were hacked by Uma Thurman in the first stories," or a daughter's revenge story. But nothing ever came of either idea. In 2012, Tarantino finally conceded it probably wouldn't happen. And in February 2018, Thurman called Tarantino out for making her drive a car too fast while filming Vol. 2, ultimately crashing and injuring herself. Don't expect them to be working together anytime soon.

The tagline for 2010's remake of Clash of the Titans was "Titans will clash," which does an excellent job of summing up both the plot of the movie and exactly what the filmmakers thought of their audience. (Not much.) Despite this, the film wound up being kinda fun, in a dumb, goofy sorta way. Good box office and not-as-awful-as-expected reviews (from Roger Ebert, no less) evidently led the producers to think they had a series on their hands because a sequel was immediately announced, and then a third part announced before that sequel was even released (via Hollywood Reporter). It seemed Titans would be clashing forever, or at least they could have been, had the sequel not sucked reproductive organs.

2012's Wrath of the Titans was everything the original seemed like it was going to be: a garish explosion-fest that was as emotionally satisfying as cholera. More to the point, it underperformed at the box office, pulling in only $83 million domestically, about half what the original managed. Despite having been announced back in 2011, the final part of the trilogy was put on indefinite hold. In very little time at all, "indefinite hold" became industry speak for "canceled."

By 2013, even the producer, Basil Iwanyk, was saying he couldn't see Titans 3 happening without fresh ideas (via IGN). If you're still looking, Mr. Iwanyk, how about a movie where Titans resolutely refuse to clash? Now that would be a twist.

If the turnaround on some superhero franchises seems fast now (ahem, Spider-Man), spare a thought for audiences in the 1990s. After Bat-breaking box office records with 1989's Batman, director Tim Burton and star Michael Keaton returned three years later with Batman Returns, a movie that hinted at more Bat-adventures to come. In 1995, those adventures dutifully arrived, only now they were a neon-drenched Bat-debacle fronted by Val Kilmer, directed by Joel Schumacher, and featuring Jim Carrey as an ordinary actor bitten by a radioactive slice of ham. What happened?

Simple. As with Chinatown, Burton's trilogy was completely sunk by its underperforming middle part. Batman Returns received negative reviews by the bucketload. While it did OK at the box office, it also got lambasted for promoting violence, damaging McDonald's Happy Meal tie-in toy sales. So Warner Bros. dropped Burton, Keaton left, and the final part of the trilogy was replaced by two ridiculously garish Schumacher films.

Burton fans (or Schumacher haters) can still content themselves with the little clues about Part 3 in the existing films. Billy Dee Williams had been all teed up to play Twoface. Marlon Wayans was cast as Robin in Batman Returns but was left on the cutting room floor. Industry rumor suggests Robin Williams was meant to play a manically unhinged Riddler. Would it have been any good? Hey, it couldn't have been worse than Batman and Robin.

In the wake of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter films, studios were scrambling to find the next big fantasy epic. Narnia, the Avatar books, and more were all bought up, but it was New Line that bagged the winner. His Dark Materials was a grim atheist fantasy by British writer Philip J. Pullman that had set the literary world alight a decade earlier. It had battles. Baddies. School children sprinting through spectacular set pieces. Post-Potter, it seemed a surefire success.

And it might have been had the first film, The Golden Compass, not managed to anger just about everyone. Fans were outraged that New Line tried to water down the books' anti-religion themes, while religious organizations were outraged by the diluted remnants of those same themes. (According to The Guardian, Fox News even claimed it was part of that year's "war on Christmas".) Perhaps it's no surprise the film made barely $70 million at the domestic box office against its $180 million budget.

The global box office was actually pretty solid, adding another $300 million, but the damage had already been done to its reputation. It didn't help that New Line forced the creation of a cliffhanger, gotta-watch-the-sequel ending in an attempt to milk money right out of viewers' pockets. Bad news for anyone still waiting: the poor reviews and bad box office killed this trilogy as dead as the series' own god.

There are formal trilogies and there are informal trilogies, like three thematically linked films in a larger series. According to various reports, Timothy Dalton's mooted Bond trilogy would have fallen into the latter camp. Conceived as a way of capping the actor's involvement with the franchise, it would have given Dalton's Bond a big send-off while indulging in the themes that made his previous two outings so distinct.

Known in pre-production as Bond 17, the unfinished picture got as far as the scripting stage. The plot involved deadly accidents at nuclear power stations in the U.K. and China, the work of a British-Chinese megalomaniac determined to use the threat of a catastrophic meltdown to force the British to hand Hong Kong back to China. Needless to say, Bond would have stopped this unthinkable eventuality by breaking into the bad guy's base and blow-torching his face off. If that sounds a little grotesque, it all fits in with the idea of this capping a Dalton trilogy. His previous Bond film, 1989's License to Kill, ended with him setting a dude on fire.

Bond 17 stayed on the table right up until 1994, when Dalton got tired of waiting and quit the role. Bond was recast as Pierce Brosnan, and Bond 17 became Goldeneye. Perhaps it's just as well. Within two years of Goldeneye's release, Hong Kong had been handed back to China with nary a megalomaniac in sight.

In terms of offers you most certainly can refuse, "would you like two more Justice League movies directed by Zack Snyder?" is up there with "would you like to take part in our new reality TV series Sleeping with Porcupines?" After disappointing audiences with Man of Steel in 2013, Snyder went on to really disappoint audiences with Batman v Superman in 2016, before teaming up with Joss Whedon to redefine notions of disappointment with 2017's half-dark, half-goofy, all-flop Justice League, aka the film that ended this iteration of the DCEU.

After three critical maulings, plus worse than expected box office, DC canceled all remaining plans for Snyder-fronted movies. Most people who actually saw Justice League probably picked up that a sequel was on the cards, but a trilogy? Well, according to Kevin Smith's Fatman Beyond podcast, that was exactly what Snyder had planned. The next two movies were gonna throw the DC kitchen sink at the screen and hope that awesomeness followed.

Smith talked to many people involved with the planned trilogy. He claims part two would have introduced the Green Lantern and intergalactic villain Thanos — sorry, Darkseid — who would have defeated the League, arrived on Earth, and killed a significant percentage of its population. (Say, 50 percent?) Part three would have then seen the League regroup and return to Earth, finally defeating Darkseid and probably destroying some magical Minfinity Shmones or something. It sounds kinda cool on paper, but then so did Suicide Squad.

The young adult book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians is about what would happen if a teenage boy discovered he had the powers of a demigod. The movie series Percy Jackson is a cautious morality tale about what did happen when a bunch of producers discovered they could make serious money ruining books for everyone. Debuting with an un-awesome 49 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the first Percy Jackson movie, The Lightning Thief, still did well enough to warrant a sequel, Sea of Monsters. Although that movie dropped to an even less awesome 42 percent, a third part was still greenlit. Hey, at this rate it'd take two whole other movies to get down to Batman vs Superman levels of badness!

Despite the third part seeming like a sure bet, nothing came of The Titan's Curse. As early as 2014, star Logan Lerman was saying he thought it "unlikely" that the series would ever be completed. From the distant future, we can confirm he was right. With Lerman now in his late twenties, his Percy Jackson ship has probably sailed for good.

Still, fear not, fans of Greek myth transplanted to modern America! After Disney acquired most of Fox's properties in 2019, the rights to the Percy Jackson book series carried over to the House of Mouse. With Disney+ looking to make a major streaming splash, what are the odds that we'll soon see this one rebooted as a rollicking TV series?

The 2010s will be remembered as the decade where splitting YA book adaptations into unnecessary two-part films became practically a legal obligation (hey, it's not like anything else happened in that decade. Err, right...?) There was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hunger Games: Mockingjay, and Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. So when the producers of the Divergent series turned their attention to the third and final book, they unsurprisingly decided to split it in two. Some fans may have grumbled about the delayed conclusion, but at least they'd get their ending in the near-future. Like, Hollywood wasn't gonna just film half the final book and leave the conclusion permanently hanging. Yeah, about that...

According to ScreenRant, the first two Divergent films had done solid but unspectacular box office, and there were signs the appetite for Hunger Games knock-offs was already waning. But in a spectacular demonstration of how money always trumps art in Hollywood, the producers decided to take their chances and split the last movie regardless. Part 1, Allegiant, was released in 2016. It bombed so, so hard.

Allegiant's box office was a mere $180 million against a $110 million budget (via Collider). This was such a fail that plans for the second part, Ascendant were canceled and replaced with a TV movie that most of the original cast refused to take part in. Facing backlash from Divergent's remaining fans and indifference from everyone else, in 2018 the studio canceled even this cruddy consolation prize.