Trilogies that will sadly never get finished

It seems like just about every new movie is looking to be turned into a franchise or a trilogy these days. While it makes sense for some movies (like superhero stories) to receive multiple sequels and be part of a shared universe, it doesn't always need to happen. (If you saw The Hangover, you get the idea. If you saw any of the sequels to The Hangover, you're jumping from your seat and shouting, "Preach!") Of course, sometimes movies just aren't commercially successful enough for a studio to greenlight a sequel, even if the sequel was going to be really awesome and even if it does leave the previous movie on a totally unacceptable cliffhanger. But people vote with their wallets, so there are plenty of studios with planned sequels that never saw the light of day. Here are some of the movies that will never see their trilogies completed, no matter how much you beg.

Despite critics and audiences largely detesting Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3, Tobey Maguire at least got the chance to conclude his Spider-Man trilogy. That's something Andrew Garfield will never get to do, because in 2015 Sony Pictures suspended plans to expand the Amazing Spider-Man franchise and instead opted to share the character with Marvel Studios. As a result, we now have a new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a rebooted Spider-Man film series. That one officially kicks off with Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017. But what were Sony's original plans?

Prior to Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014, Sony planned to launch an extended Spider-Man franchise to compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was going to include two more Amazing Spider-Man films (releasing in June 2016 and May 2018), as well as spinoffs for Venom and the Sinister Six, directed by Alex Kurtzman and Drew Goddard, respectively. Sony also hired Lisa Joy Nolan to write a script for a female superhero movie set in their Spider-Man universe, but nothing has since come of it.

Although the studio canceled plans to pursue more Amazing Spider-Man films, they have not shuttered all the Spider-Man spinoff films. In March 2016, Sony confirmed it was moving forward with the Venom film, with Dante Harper penning the script and Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach producing. However, there don't appear to be plans to have the movie connect to either the Amazing Spider-Man films or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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.

In 1984, Robert Zemeckis managed to take a movie Fox had written off and turn it into box office gold. Romancing the Stone was that year's sleeper hit, thanks in no small part to stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner having chemistry explosive enough to power a small fusion reactor. Fox was so impressed it immediately rushed out a sequel, Jewel of the Nile.

Although Nile did good box office, it was hell to make. Den of Geek reports that neither Turner nor Douglas wanted to do the picture, and only agreed after Fox threatened to take them to court for breach of contract. Still, easy money is easy money, and it wasn't long before Douglas announced that a final chapter, The Crimson Eagle, would soon be released. Like, any minute now. Any. Minute. Now...

For a long time, Eagle looked a sure bet. IGN notes Douglas quit his role in 1997's U-571 to focus on it. In 2008, a retitled version called Chasing the Monsoon was reported as preparing to shoot in India, with Catherine Zeta Jones taking over from Kathleen Turner (via Telegraph). It would have been the first proper Hollywood and Bollywood co-production ... had it not also vanished into development hell. By 2011 Monsoon had itself been replaced by a remake, which in turn was replaced by a TV series that also seems to have now dropped off the radar. Just think of all those poor stones that will never know romance.

In 1994, a little action movie came out. It was about a bus that had to speed around a city, keeping its speed over 50 mph, and if its speed dropped, it would explode. Yep, The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down (or, to give it its boring, real-life name, Speed) was a sleeper hit, setting the box office alight and proving that Keanu Reeves' three stock facial expressions were absolutely no impediment to him starring in action flicks. Unless, that is, that action flick was Speed 2: Cruise Control, a movie about what would happen if you put a bomb on perhaps the least exciting, least speedy of all vehicles (a cruise ship) and said "action?"

The Keanu-less Speed 2 tanked. Despite a weirdly good review from Roger Ebert, the film today holds a grim 4 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. To put that in perspective, the steaming mess that was 2016's Suicide Squad has 27 percent. Suicide Squad, people!

Now, unlike some of the trilogies we've mentioned, this wasn't originally planned as a trilogy. But despite Speed 2 being so pungent you could serve it as an Icelandic delicacy, it wasn't long before rumors began of Speed 3 began floating around. As late as 2008, Den of Geek reported Reeves was set to return to the franchise, giving it the sendoff it deserved. However, it seems that rumors were all they ever were. Although a treatment made its way onto the internet, the proposed Speed capstone never reached production. The only Speed 3 we have today is one involving Irish priests slowly driving explosive-rigged milk trucks. (Thanks, Father Ted!)

In 1999, Konami dropped a little game known as Silent Hill. A survival horror that leaned into both Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft while being its own unique thing, Silent Hill was mainstream proof that games could be scary. It was atmospheric. Eerie. It used what were then common limitations (everything beyond a certain distance vanishing into an unrendered haze), and made them parts of its creepy world. (The town of Silent Hill is permanently wreathed in mist.) Inevitably, it wasn't long before Hollywood came calling.

2006's Silent Hill took the storyline of the first two games and turned it into a film that, as Roger Ebert attested, managed to both look fantastic and make absolutely no sense. Still, that was enough to earn decent box office returns, and there was soon buzz about future Silent Hill films. At that point — 2006 — there were still three more games ready to be adapted, plus another on the way. Did someone say ... trilogy?

While talk of a trilogy was never official, that hope was in the back of fans' minds when Silent Hill: Revelation finally hit theaters in 2012. Then they actually saw Revelation and got to watch their trilogy dreams die in real time. Silent Hill: Revelation was a mess that not even Kit Harington's feature film debut could save. It was even less coherent than the original, but with none of the fantastic production design. The film was so unremittingly awful that it killed off all talk of another sequel. In 2018, director M.J. Bassett even publicly apologized for it.