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."

What happened on page 47? That is the one question that has been plaguing National Treasure fans ever since Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure: Book of Secrets released in 2007. The unnamed President of the United States, played by Bruce Greenwood, tells Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) that when Gates reads the President's Book of Secrets to take a look at page 47. Unfortunately, audiences were never privy to what exactly was on the fateful page. But considering that the book contains answers to mysteries like the JFK assassination, the missing minutes of the Watergate tapes, and the existence of Area 51, audiences can only imagine what puzzle the President needed Gates' help with solving.

Despite receiving negative reviews from critics, Book of Secrets was a surprising financial success, earning almost $460 million worldwide. The success prompted Disney to commission a sequel the following year. With the studio acquiring domain names for National Treasure 3 and 4, rumors began to spread that the Mouse House was eyeing back-to-back sequels. Although he was interested in making another National Treasure film, Turtletaub said they were going to take their time and get the story right before moving forward. "[U]ntil we have a great story, a great adventure and a great piece of history to explore, there's no point in making the movie," he told Canoe. In 2013, things were finally moving when Turteltaub told Collider they were about "halfway there," and that they were planning to start production in 2015. Unfortunately, nothing ever happened.

Disney and Warner Bros. may control the majority of major comic book properties via Marvel and DC Comics, but that doesn't mean people should count out other studios. Universal Pictures has made several attempts at producing non-Marvel and non-DC Comics movies, such as the aforementioned Hellboy series. Another successful attempt to break from the Big Two? Kick-Ass, based on the indie comic series of the same name by Mark Millar.

Director Matthew Vaughn brought Kick-Ass to life on the big screen in 2008, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson starring as the eponymous costumed hero. Praised for its adult themes, Kick-Ass received positive reviews from critics and managed to become a modest box office success, prompting Universal to move forward with a sequel. Directed by Jeff Wadlow, Kick-Ass 2 released in August 2013 to negative reviews. Although the film was a decent commercial success, it failed to perform as well as the first film.

Shortly before the release of Kick-Ass 2, Millar confirmed plans for a third movie that would largely depend upon how much money the second movie made. Later that month, Millar reiterated plans for a third installment and even went further, saying Kick-Ass 3 would conclude the Kick-Ass trilogy with a major death. In 2014, Taylor-Johnson, Mintz-Plasse, and Moretz all expressed interest in Kick-Ass 3, despite the fact that none of them were actually contracted for a third film. However, instead of immediately pursuing a sequel, Vaughn said in 2015 that he'd like to make a Hit-Girl prequel before tackling Kick-Ass 3. But with Vaughn's busy schedule, who knows if we'll get either movie?

After achieving global success with Bryan Singer's X-Men series, 20th Century Fox hoped to build off those movies' hype by moving forward with a Fantastic Four series. The first Fantastic Four movie, starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis as the titular heroes, released in 2005 to mixed reviews. However, fan anticipation led the Fantastic Four to become a box office success, earning over three times its production budget.

Fantastic Four's success inevitably led Fox to commission a sequel, titled Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Director Tim Story and the rest of the cast and crew all returned for the 2007 follow-up. Despite being critically better than the first film, Rise of the Silver Surfer still received mixed to negative reviews and even performed slightly worse at the worldwide box office, taking in $289 million on an estimated $130 million production budget. Those mediocre box office results initially made Fox hesitant about immediately pursuing a sequel.

However, there was hope. All five of the main cast members, including Julian McMahon (aka Doctor Doom), were signed on for three-picture deals. They were also interested in making another movie and diving deeper into the Fantastic Four mythos by introducing new characters, such as Franklin Richards. Although Story was keen to make a third and fourth film, Fox was having none of it. Evans put an end to fans' hopes in 2008 saying the franchise is "a closed book." And he was right. Instead, Fox attempted to reboot the Fantastic Four in 2015 with Josh Trank at the helm — a film so bad it might've finally iced the franchise for good.

Not many people know that Roman Polanski's 1974 masterpiece Chinatown already has a sequel. In 1990, Jack Nicholson reprised the role of grizzled PI Jake Gittes in The Two Jakes, a sequel that is to its predecessor what Godfather III is to The Godfather. But had The Two Jakes set the box office alight, it would've paved the way for a full-on trilogy.

Polanski's original turned the detective movie on its head with its story of evil, rich men being shielded by a rotten system, even as they exploited a vital resource (water) and destroyed the lives of those they loved. The Two Jakes chose not to flip the formula back and featured yet more evil, rich men exploiting natural resources (oil) while destroying loved ones' lives. While not directed by Polanski (Nicholson took over as director, for obvious reasons), it was still high-profile enough for writer Robert Towne to envisage yet another tale of evil men exploiting resources and messing up family members' lives. Hey, if it ain't broke.

Gittes vs. Gittes would've seen Nicholson's detective take on a monopoly controlling access to the L.A. freeway while also going through a messy divorce — the other "Gittes" of the title. Unfortunately, The Two Jakes bombed so hard that Towne gave up on the idea of Part 3 altogether. Not that Chinatown 3's story ended there. A competing treatment commissioned by the studio wound up being reused as the basis of another L.A. noir film, 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

On paper, the Millennium trilogy must have looked like the surest bet in Hollywood. Based on the mega-selling books by Stieg Larsson? Check. Directed by David Fincher, the genre-hopping talent behind Fight Club and Se7en? Check. Shirtless Daniel Craig? Double check. To paraphrase Philip J. Fry, shut up and take our money!

The first Millennium movie, 2011's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, managed to pull in $223 million off a $90 million budget, enough to prompt talk of a sequel. There were still two books left unfilmed, and a Fincher/Craig Girl Who Played with Fire and Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest would be sure to generate a tidy profit. Since the original books function as a trilogy, it made sense for the films to do the same. Well, it would have made sense if the movies were fronted by a cheaper lead actor.

Sony claims Craig wanted too much money to reprise the role of Mikael Blomkvist for two more films. At one point, they considered completing the trilogy with a different lead. Then they ditched Fincher, too, and talk of a trilogy went out the window. Latest reports say Sony was planning a 2018 reboot with a new cast, adapting the semi-official fourth Millennium book, written after Larsson's death without consent of his partner and without referring to Larsson's own unfinished draft or notes. It may turn out to be popular, but it sure as heck won't be a continuation.

Escape from New York is John Carpenter's gritty, weird 1981 ode to a city he apparently hated, a tale in which New York has become a giant prison and only Kurt Russell is man enough to punch his way in there to save the president. Yeah, it's a B-movie, but what a B-movie! There's action. Watergate parallels. Harry Dean Stanton's hangdog face. You get the idea. By the 1990s, Escape was already a cult classic, and one that was crying out for a sequel. So Carpenter and Russell obliged, twice. They announced two new parts: Escape from LA, and Escape from Earth. Spoiler alert: Only one of those would actually get made.

Geek site The Mary Sue has the full details, but they can be summed up in a single sentence. Escape from LA bombed. It bombed harder than any movie featuring Kurt Russell hang-gliding into Disneyland while firing a machine gun has any right to. The trouble was, LA was beyond wacky. It had Russell chase a car by surfing after it. It had Botox monsters. World-saving basketball games. No Harry Dean Stanton. While some people love it today, '90s audiences treated it like the celluloid itself was made from roadkill.

Nevertheless, Carpenter and Russell tried to get their trilogy's capstone finished. It nearly became a TV series, then an anime movie. Today, though, Escape from Earth is officially dead, with the production company instead reviving Escape from New York as a new trilogy directed by Robert Rodriguez.

Conan the Barbarian was the 1982 film that introduced us to Arnie's glistening, oiled pecs, thus beginning a process that would turn the Austrian muscleman into a global star. That's all you need to know to understand the fate of the Conan trilogy, which would have seen 1984's sequel Conan the Destroyer followed in 1987 by a final part. Sadly for fans of Arnold in a loincloth (i.e., everyone), 1984 was also the year a little movie called The Terminator was released. The idea of any B-movie being able to afford Arnie after that was unlikely, to say the least.

But, hey, God works in mysterious ways. Conan 3's script was eventually reworked into 1997's Kull the Conqueror and, as this old review attests, it was one of the most hilariously godawful things ever committed to celluloid. That bullet dodged, Arnie waited a while, did some political stuff in California, then finally revived the idea of a Conan trilogy after leaving the governor's mansion. The plan was to revisit Conan at the end of his life, in a script that took the same approach as Unforgiven did for Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name, and Logan did for Wolverine. Don't worry, that feeling in your pants is perfectly natural.

Sadly, not all producers are able to distinguish between "awesome" and "not awesome" because Conan's final outing was killed off in April 2017 (via Den of Geek). An Arnie-fronted TV spin-off is now heading to Amazon's streaming service instead.

A great crying fills the air, birds fall from the sky, as mobs of people in the street openly beat their chests and wail, "But Grunge, how could you include the Divergent films? There are already three of them. Your premise is moot! Truly, this must be the end of days!"

To which we can only say: guilty. But with one planet-sized caveat. The third film, Divergent: Allegiant, is only based on the first half of the concluding Divergent book. Just like the Harry Potter series sliced Deathly Hallows into two parts for a combination of artistic reasons, and a deep-seated fear that the producers would have to find something other than gigantic piles of fresh money to sleep on, Summit Entertainment decided to turn the Allegiant book into two films: Allegiant and Ascendant. In what can only be called a masterful piece of trolling, they then canceled Ascendant (via Vanity Fair). Oh, spent the last three movies waiting for a conclusion have you? Well, here it is, and it's called disappointment! You just learned an important life lesson, kids.

Ascendant is now destined to become a TV series, which seems a fair trade-off, until you learn that the series' star, Shailene Woodley, isn't going to be involved. To return to our Harry Potter analogy, imagine if Deathly Hallows Part 2 had only been available online, and starring, say, Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz as Harry. Gee, Hollywood, you sure know how to mess with people.

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?