8 Incomplete Movie Trilogies

8 Incomplete Movie Trilogies

We’ve gotten countless of great movie trilogies over the years, but that doesn’t mean that every franchise set out to be a trilogy actually gets a third movie. So today I’m looking at 8 incomplete movie trilogies. Let’s get started!

NOTE: I know there’s several other trilogies that never got completed, but there’s a lot more than what I could include in this blog post. And for them to count on this post there had to have been TWO movies that never got a THIRD Movie. So film franchises canceled after ONE movie aren't counted in this post. 

• Gremlins: Back in 1984 the original Gremlins movie came out and was a huge hit making over $212.9 million at the box office. It was produced by Steven Spielberg when he was in his prime, it’s a script written by Chris Columbus about 6 years before Home Alone came out. And Joe Dante was on the rise as possibly a promising young director in Hollywood. To this day, it’s a classic of the decade. That’s a solid entry level horror film, it’s a family horror movie. The movie was such a success where they greenlit a sequel titled Gremlins 2: The New Batch that was released in 1990. It was still profitable, but got a lot of mixed reviews from critics. Ever since then, there’s been lots of talks about whether or not a Gremlins 3 will happen. Over the years, Chris Columbus has been asked in multiple interviews. Apparently there’s a finished script for this movie that’s been done for several years now. It sounds like Zach Galligan from the original films was going to return years later. They wanted to do a Jurassic World approach to the sequel. Christopher Columbus was asked in 2020 by Collider about a possible third film. He said he’d be open to doing it, there’s a sequel written and ready to go. But it sounds like the big problem with it is there’s a lot of issues with the rights to the Gremlins franchise. It’s a bit unclear at the moment who owns the rights to the franchise, so as of now it doesn't look like we’ll get a Gremlins 3. But there’s an animated tv show on HBO Max for kids. 

• Batman: One of the most important films of the comic book movie genre would be Tim Burton’s Batman from 1989. It was the first big budget theatrical Batman film. It launched Michael Keaton into being this A-list actor, they got Jack Nicholson when he was sort of in his prime. It was a huge hit at the box office that was followed three years later with Batman Returns. That once again was a big hit film and gave us two more great Batman villains with Penguin and Catwoman. After both films are hit films, a third film was almost certainly going to happen, the title would have been “Batman Continues” (which is so stupid, that’s like that worst possible title for a movie). Technically we did get a “third movie” with Batman Forever. But Batman Continues would have been a proper sequel to Batman Returns with Michael Keaton returning as Batman. Michelle Pfeiffer would return as Catwoman and we would have seen Billy Dee Williams return as Harvey Dent and become Two-Face in the movie. The Riddler was chosen to be the main villain of the movie and none other than Robin Williams was approached by Tim Burton to play the character. Williams auditioned for The Joker that ended up going to Nicholson. Williams wasn’t sure if he wanted another go in the genre. Marlon Waynes was going to be in here as Robin. Apparently the contract he signed receives a penalty fee and it still gives him the option to return to the role if he wants to. And as of 2018 he was receiving royalty payments. So they had all of these ideas for a third movie, why didn’t it happen? Well leading up to the release of both Batman (1989) and Batman Returns, WB put out a line of McDonalds toys for Happy Meals. The problem was Tim Burton went so dark with Batman Returns and with these black liquid coming out of Penguin’s mouth. McDonalds said “we can’t put these toys in happy meals”. But WB was making a lot of money off of selling these toys and they still wanted to print money and make Batman movies. So they revamped the entire franchise and hired Joel Schumacher to direct a movie and make it lighter so they can sell kids toys and merchandise. And that’s how we got Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, and nipples on the bat suit. 

• Hellboy: Some of the more underappreciated comic book movies of the 21st century would be the Guiliermo del Toro directed Hellboy movies. I think both movies are great with interesting world building and a fun set of characters. And we never did a third film in this trilogy, which is unfortunate. Upon doing research as to why we never got a third movie. Prior to the second movie, The Golden Army coming out Del Toro was hired to direct The Hobbit. So he wasn’t attached to Hellboy for two years because he was working to develop The Hobbit. In May 2010, he dropped from directing the film and said Hellboy 3 had yet to be written and would be shot after his next movie. In 2012, Perlman was still open to returning as the character and wanted to close out the trilogy to feel complete. Time went by, Perlman was still hopeful and Del Toro was simply too busy. He proposed making Hellboy 3 into a comic book. But the writer of the Hellboy comic book, Mike Mignola said no. Plus, the previous two movies didn’t break even their budgets. So no studios really wanted to green light a third movie. The movie did break even when they dropped on DVD and Blu-Ray but in the streaming world, that sort of revenue wasn’t guaranteed anymore. In 2014, Del Toro made a deal with Legendary (the studio) that said if Pacific Rim: Uprising was a hit then they’d fund Hellboy 3. Del Toro directed the first Pacific Rim that came out in 2013, it was a big hit so naturally a sequel was announced. But Del Toro left directing the film, so the deal fell through. And February 2017, Del Toro confirmed that a third film was dead and was never going to happen. Hellboy fans had to wait until April 2019 to get a reboot of the Hellboy character starring David Harbour…and was trashed by critics and bombed hard at the box office. Earlier this year a new reboot of Hellboy, Hellboy: The Crooked Man wrapped filming from director Brian Taylor with a script written by Mignola himself. 

• Fantastic Four: The late 90s to the early 00s is when the comic book genre was becoming what is today. This big massive genre that has several hit films (maybe not counting 2023). From Marvel you had big hit films like Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, X-Men, and X2: X-Men United. Hulk and Daredevil…not received all that well. So they announced a Fantastic Four movie after the success of X-Men they thought ensemble movies were the way to go. The first movie came out in 2005, made money but got bad reviews. Not that many people liked the film, people called it boring. In 2007, a sequel was released that some people consider to be better but not by much. Tim Story, the director of the films, had plans for a third and fourth movie. Tim Story wanted to bring in Black Panther at one point. The screenwriter, Don Payne had ideas for The Inhumans and Skrull. So when the sequel came out, it got better reviews but made less money. Which was a problem because The Silver Surfer needed a lot of CGI, so they were worried about the financial risk that a third movie might be. Also, the following year in 2008 we got Iron Man and The Dark Knight, movies that got great reviews and looked like the genre was changing. So they scrapped a third film and rebooted the franchise in 2015 that got TERRIBLE reviews. As of now, the MCU is working on another reboot coming to theaters May 2025.   

• The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Man is arguably Marvel’s most popular superhero. In the last 20 years, we’ve gotten three different live action interpretations of the web-slinger. In 2012, the second reboot starred Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man and Emma Stone as the love interest, Gwen Stacey. The Amazing Spider-Man didn’t get great reviews, but it did get positive reviews with lots of people liking it. However, the sequel drew in a lot of negative reviews due to being overstuffed with set-up for future movies. This movie had a lot in there to set up The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4 plus multiple spin-offs. Because they crammed all of that set-up into the sequel, there wasn’t a clear story that people connected to. They even had writers involved for a third movie with Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Jeff Pinker all of them wrote the first two films. The third movie was going to introduce The Sinister Six featuring villains like Green Goblin, Vulture, Rhino, Doctor Octopus, Kraven the Hunter, and Mysterio. The movie never happened due to the negative reception of the film plus it underperforming at the box office. Now the movie didn’t bomb, it still made $709 million. But the studio was hoping this would be a $1 billion movie, it wasn’t. Another reason, Andrew Garfield wasn’t really happy with Sony at the time. Garfield wasn’t doing a lot of promotion for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Garfield has been very open about how he was disappointed with the final product of the movie. He said the script he first read was great and emotional, and what we got didn’t resemble that script whatsoever. So after future plans in Andrew Garfield’s universe were canceled, the character was rebooted in 2016 with Marvel Studios. However, Andrew Garfield would return as Spider-Man in the mega hit film, Spider-Man: No Way Home. 

• Jack Reacher: Jack Reacher was a pair of Tom Cruise action movies from 2012 and 2016. The movies are based on a long run of books by Lee Child. The 2012 movie was successful making over $200 million. Looked like it could be Tom Cruise’s next big franchise. In October 2016, a sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back was released in theaters. Both films were criticized for only being PG-13, I guess the books had the material to be rated-R. And in the books, Jack Rechers is 6 '5 and 250 pounds, who uses his fists and mind to fight, material that can be used very well for R-rated action. But they cast Tom Cruise, who is just playing Tom Cruise. So neither one of the movies are great adaptations of the movie. The first film was directed by Christopher McQuarrie who’s directed the last four Mission Impossible movies. He wrote the screenplay for Top Gun: Maverick. He and Cruise are really good friends. McQuarrie said he and Cruise talked about doing a third film. They could make this film rated-R and felt like they could after the success of Deadpool, Logan, and Joker. Apparently, Lee Child is actually one of the main reasons why a third movie never happened. He has been very open in interviews talking about how he doesn’t like Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, he wants an actor that more closely resembles the book. Even in Lee’s contract it said, he can choose to end the franchise after two films. So a third movie never happened, but a reboot happened in the form of a tv show on Amazon Prime with Alan Ritchson starring as the title character. Season 2 drops towards the middle of December. 

• Alien Covenant: I actually haven’t seen any Alien movie, I know I know. It’s one of those classic franchises that I have yet to see. There's multiple beloved films in the franchise, I Ridley Scott is the director of the first film from 1979 that started this entire franchise. In 2012, he released Prometheus, which was a prequel to Alien, describing the original story of the aliens. That movie got solid reviews and was successful at the box office. Five years later, Alien Covenant the sequel was released and wasn’t well liked and sort of bombed. It only made $240 million worldwide, it had a 71% drop in its second weekend. After this, the two other Alien prequel sequels were canceled by Fox. Filming for the third film was going to start in December 2017 with the title Alien: Awakening. Ridley Scott has talked about what the film would have been, he had plans for the prequel franchise to be six films that all depended on Alien Covenant being a success…it wasn’t. He even said that Alien: Awakening would have taken place between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. While this will never happen, fans don’t have to wait much longer for another Alien movie. With a new one scheduled for August 2024 on Hulu with Fede Alvarez as the director.  

• Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman is a very popular DC character, but it took a while for her to make her live action debut on the big screen. In 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Gal Gadot debuted as Wonder Woman (in a very epic scene). The following year, Wonder Woman hit theaters and got wide spread love with some calling it one of DC’s best movies to date. Mixed with being a big hit at the box office making over $800 million. So a sequel was naturally in the works with Patty Jenkins to return as the director titled Wonder Woman 1984. That film got multiple delays due to the COVID pandemic and was released in theaters and on HBO Max in December 2020. That film got mixed reviews, a lot of people consider it to be a big downgrade from the first film. But a third film was announced with Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins returning. This movie was canceled due to WB and DC moving in a different direction with its universe. And by the end of 2022, the DCEU will end with the DCU starting in July 2025 under the helm of James Gunn and Peter Safran. The film was canceled due to it not fitting in with Gunn and Safran’s plan for their universe. Gunn also said none of the Justice League members from the DCEU will continue on into the DCU. One final note, apparently they finished writing the script about one week before the cancellation was announced.