It's a new year and a new time for Hollywood to attempt movie franchise building. We count down their 12 boldest attempts for 2014!
This past year, we saw sequels announced to films like World War Z, Now You See Me, Olympus Has Fallen, The Conjuring and a number of other original movies, spawning movie franchises likely or otherwise. It was a reminder that, while a number of franchises seem as predetermined as Harry Potter orSpider-Man, others seem to spring almost specifically from audience demand.
Ideally, Hollywood would promote franchises in perpetuity, but sometimes you’ve got to try something new, or in some cases new, but familiar. To that end, here are a few 2014 movies poised to spawn a series of sequels, and how likely that is to happen.
HERCULES
POWER PLAYERS: Dwayne Johnson, director Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand), executive producer Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights).
BASED UPON: Folklore, naturally, but specifically a graphic novel series called Hercules: The Thracian Wars from little-known publisher Radical Studios.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: Johnson has been seen as franchise Viagra in recent years, stepping into Fast Five, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation to help those films register higher numbers than their predecessors. But Johnson hasn’t been able to launch a series on his own, and attempts like The Rundown (with Berg), Doom, and Race To Witch Mountain haven’t panned out. That being said, Johnson has been in five $100 million films since 2010, and has carved out enough of a niche as a major movie star that when audiences see him flexing his muscles as Hercules, it will simply make sense.
Ratner is a little bit of a wild-card. Ratner famously ruled over the Rush Hour films, and they went out strong with a third installment that made $258 million worldwide. Almost eight years later, Ratner is responsible for the most successful in the X-Men series as well, though it’s certainly telling that they’ve never invited him back for another go-round. His last film was the high-profile Tower Heist, which collected $152 million worldwide. You can’t argue with Ratner’s hitmaker status, but the consensus seems to be that he makes substandard films that even diehard fans are dispassionate about.
Then again, Hercules is a pretty regular presence on-screen, not only providing the subject matter for 25 films, but starring in two films this year, the first being the lower-budgeted The Legend of Hercules. While that picture is more of a quick-hit release designed to profit off foreign pre-sales, it could still be fresh in audience’s minds by the time Johnson’s version hits theaters. Both films also attempt a more realistic angle and could easily carry some of the same attributes to audiences. However, given that Ratner is one of the more generic filmmakers in the business, Hercules could still easily be another stillborn Dwayne Johnson offering.
COMPETITION: Hercules currently has a pretty clear path to success, opening on July 25, a week after Jupiter Ascending, and a week before Guardians Of The Galaxy, two of the riskier summer blockbusters in recent memory. There’s a very good chance someone could see this as primo real estate and challenge Hercules with a release date shift. If it’s a proven brand, there’s a very good chance Johnson could be screaming “Uncle.”
LONGEVITY: If the film is a hit, the affable Johnson could easily play Hercules forever: there’s not exactly a shortage of myths to utilize.
GODZILLA
POWER PLAYERS: None, really.
BASED UPON: The latest in a long legacy of Godzilla movies with rumor spreading that it shares DNA with the earlier films more than Roland Emmerich’s 1998 version.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: Warner Bros. is hoping the Godzilla brand can carry the name recognition on its own, particularly given that the cast is relatively low-wattage. Booking Aaron Taylor-Johnson for the lead role was likely in the hopes that Kick-Ass 2 would cement his visibility, and while he’s got a tidy role in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, he remains mostly anonymous to filmgoers; the same goes for co-star Elizabeth Olsen. The biggest name in the cast might ultimately be Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston.
The coup was landing young director Gareth Edwards, who previously helmed Monsters. That low budget sci-fi story is more notable for its reportedly miniscule budget than for its content, but it’s a not-bad chiller that understood the scope of its creatures as well as the power of a practical boogeyman or two. Edwards was nabbed primarily because he made a couple of big-screen thrills sing in a relatively modest character piece, though the WB is throwing a massive $160 million budget at this film, so they’re expecting a much stronger reception.
COMPETITION: The summer of 2014 is filled with less established brands than recent memory, and Godzilla has a sweet slot on May 16, matched up against the modest counterprogramming of Million Dollar Arm. It’s coming a week before X-Men: Days Of Future Past, so a big opening weekend is necessary, but how fresh is the intolerable 1998 version in viewers’ minds? Batman Begins debuted in 2005 to an underwhelming $48 million, which was mostly credited to the toxic reputation of Batman & Robin; the hope is that Godzilla won’t undergo the same fate. Still, the big summer opener is the vulnerable-looking The Amazing Spider-Man 2, followed by the lower-budgeted Neighbors a week later. Godzillais actually in a primo position to be one of the season’s stronger performers.
LONGEVITY: This is a massively expensive film: are Edwards and company thinking series? The Toho films have an extensive mythology, but Edwards’ hyper-real approach, and the pricetag involved, likely prevents studios from adapting more outlandish (and enjoyable!) entries like Destroy All Monsters.
ROBOCOP
POWER PLAYERS: None, save for the supporting presence/lucky charm that is Samuel L. Jackson, the actor with the highest-grossing resume in cinema history.
BASED UPON: The earlier MGM trilogy beginning in 1987 that resulted in steeply declining grosses, the Nadir being the PG-13-rated RoboCop 3 that this new film closer resembles.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: MGM and Sony have been trying to get this movie off the ground for a very long time, banking that a fresh PG-13 (grumble, grumble) perspective and 3D was enough to get audiences in theaters. Now that the trailers have established this is basically a sleeker, more action-heavy approach, the hope is that audiences don’t remember the original films, and that new leading man Joel Kinnaman is a fresh face that ticket buyers will embrace.
The cast for this entry has been stacked with a number of familiar faces, but no real leading men or women, unless you count Jay Baruchel (and you don’t, do you?). Jose Padilha is also pretty green in the director’s chair, making his English-language debut after helming the admittedly pretty-awesome Elite Squad movies in Brazil. Whatever the case, they’re not banking on a core audience coming back to this RoboCop 27 years after the original: though a hit on VHS, RoboCop's $53 million gross would only translate to $109 million today, and the budget on the new film is $120 million.
COMPETITION: RoboCop is going to target males on February 12, which leaves a female demographic ripe for the picking in the lower-budgeted Vampire Academy. Meanwhile, the big budget Winter’s Tale is something of an oddity and could also siphon viewers as well. This is a week after The Lego Movie and Monuments Men, leaving young males all to RoboCop. But if all those movies hit, there’s going to be very little room for the robo-remake to carve out a niche with general crowds that would make the $120 million money well spent. RoboCop is going to need muscular reviews and word-of-mouth to get out of what looks like the most competitive early February slate in the last few years.
LONGEVITY: The secret gag in the original RoboCop is that OCP’s decision to re-animate Officer Alex Murphy is appalling and inhumane: the very seed of the idea suggests sequels are a terrible idea, and the earlier RoboCop 2earns points for acknowledging the ultimate pointlessness of the endeavor. The Frank Miller-penned RoboCop 3seemed to miss this point, effectively killing the series dead, and it seems likely that the same thing could happen here.
I, FRANKENSTEIN
POWER PLAYERS: Star Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight), writer-director Stuart Beattie (G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra), writer Kevin Grevioux (Underworld).
BASED UPON: Obviously the Mary Shelly novel, though this particular narrative comes courtesy of a comic book penned by Grevioux.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: Grevioux’s graphic novel puts a fresh (or “fresh”) spin on the Frankenstein mythos by making the monster into a good guy. Lionsgate is also clearly aiming for the Underworlddemographic by recruiting that series’ chief architect. Plus, it’s got the same late period release date as those films, suggesting that those seeking a monster mash-up fix have already made plans for this gaudy-looking adventure.
Beattie made his directorial debut with Tomorrow, When The War Began a couple of years ago, an Australian action film that had the spectacle and sheen of a major American blockbuster. But as a screenwriter, he’s been involved in films as diverse as Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, Collateral, and Australia, so he’s likely got a bit more blockbuster experience than Padilha and Edwards. And Eckhart, who led the modestly-sized blockbuster Battle: Los Angeles, still has some juice with audiences after his standout role in The Dark Knight.
COMPETITION: The Underworld films are popular, but they’ve never had to take advantage of a $68 million budget like I, Frankenstein, so it might be a tough climb. It has the January 24 slot all to itself, but it will be coming a week after Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Ride Along. The monster-mash storyline will distinguish itself from those two, but the picture’s going to have to break out from its narrow young-male niche to catch on. This is probably more likely if Ryan flops, which is certainly possible, but both films could very possibly cannibalize each other.
LONGEVITY: These guys milked Underworldlike a row of cows, so why couldn’t they do the same with Frankenstein? Eckhart’s not the youngest action star, but hey: prequels?
JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT
POWER PLAYERS: Director Kenneth Branagh (Thor), stars Chris Pine (Star Trek) and Kevin Costner.
BASED UPON: The best-selling Tom Clancy novels and four successful films.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: Jack Ryan is a name with a strong cinematic lineage, the character having carried four previous blockbusters, though none in the last decade. Those were star vehicles, more or less, with Alec Baldwin in the role for The Hunt For Red October, Harrison Ford in the part for Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger (and, unofficially, Air Force One), and Ben Affleck in The Sum Of All Fears. The only thing that kept producers from not following Fears with a Red Rabbit adaptation, as discussed, was Affleck’s precipitous fall from the A-List. The late Tom Clancy’s Ryan bestsellers have flown off the shelves for decades now, and Paramount has always been keen on kick-starting this series, with Clancy’s recent passing giving this latest effort a sense of urgency in the marketplace.
Paramount is treating this less like the older Ryan adventures and more like a typical franchise. Putting Ryan front and center in the title emphasizes this is an origin, placing the character over the actual story, which was not the case with previous Ryan films. They’ve also involved Kevin Costner in a role as a shadowy overseer, a part that the studio has openly claimed could resurface in a later Clancy adaptation centered around black-ops character John Clark, or even in Costner’s own film. Completing the Marvel-like world-building, the studio nabbed Thor director Kenneth Branagh to do to the CIA what he did for Asgard, while spotlighting Pine, a leading man who has yet to fully take advantage of his position as this generation’s James T. Kirk.
COMPETITION: It was not a good look when Paramount favored The Wolf Of Wall Street against this film, shuttling it from a primo Christmas release date into the dregs of January. When a film is released during the holidays, it’s one of many options for massive friends and families going to the movies together. By January 17, those groups have thinned considerably, and it’s hard to see too many of them selecting this over the broad Kevin Hart-Ice Cube comedy Ride Along. Paramount played this wrong, and it looks like Jack Ryan is about to go back in the cupboard.
LONGEVITY: Paramount is seeding the film with several potential hooks for spin-offs, and the various Clancy novels suggest even if the film isn’t a hit, Ryan could resurface again in the next decade.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
POWER PLAYERS: Director Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of The Titans), producer Michael Bay (Transformers).
BASED UPON: The successful comic book line that spawned a hit animated series, a live-action trilogy, and a 2007 animated big-screen adventure.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: This is the first effort for the Heroes In A Half-Shell since 2007’s animated TMNT, a middling effort that led to the property being sold to Nickelodeon. The network’s weight is behind this latest version, part of a multimedia relaunch of the characters that comes complete with new toys and television shows. So far, the results have been inconclusive, but if the film flounders, then the entire gamble might not have been worth it.
Bay’s name brings a certain tacky prestige, given that he’s responsible for the billion dollar Transformers series. But he’s only a producer, and this is coming from his Platinum Dunes shingle, a company that has made their bones on cheaply remaking horror classics to look like beer commercials that, inexplicably, fail to launch franchises. Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface had 22 installments between them over the years before landing at Platinum Dunes. After big opening weekends, the Bay-produced A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th tailed off, and neither has produced a sequel. Leatherface, to his credit, at least made it to Platinum Dunes’ Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, the second and last Chainsaw film from Platinum Dunes before Twisted Pictures bought the rights.
The Beginning grossed less than half of its predecessor, and it was directed by Liebesman, who is behind this latest Ninja Turtles adaptation. Nice job failing upwards, dude: he also directed the less-successful sequel Wrath Of The Titans and was behind the failed franchise-starter Battle: Los Angeles. He won’t matter if the material produces a couple of good trailers and marketing materials, but early fan backlash suggested the material was being taken far from its roots with some rumors indicating a change of the famously mutant turtles into space aliens. Regardless, the Turtles are the concept, and they’ve maintained enough visibility to get the kids excited for another installment.
COMPETITION: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opens up against Lucy, a zombie comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger, which… wait, did I just type that? Turtles will likely open big unless its ad campaign is a disaster (always a possibility), but will it hold on? It comes a week after Guardians Of The Galaxy and right before The Expendables 3, so the issue is whether the movie targets kids or teens and baby boomers. If it’s the latter, August is heavy on male-centric programming, so a huge second week fall could kill future Turtles movies.
LONGEVITY: The Turtles were originally created as a joke, riffing on the grim-and-gritty aesthetic of 1980s comics, before becoming something a bit more female friendly. Regardless, the universe that was soon built on the backs of Eastman and Laird’s original conception of the characters is so impressively dense that the earlier trilogy didn’t even touch upon it. There’s more than enough material for a couple of sequels.
JUPITER ASCENDING
POWER PLAYERS: The Wachowski siblings (The Matrix), Channing Tatum (21 Jump Street), Mila Kunis (Oz: The Great And Powerful, Ted)
BASED UPON: An original pitch by the Wachowskis.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: The Wachowskis, God bless them, have lost people a lot of money over the past decade. Warner Bros. have kept them in-house since the success of The Matrix series, and they’ve repaid this loyalty with the type of expensive failures (Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas) that get people banned from the industry. This is basically the Wachowskis pitching another Matrix, an elaborate sci-fi fantasy that’s meant to be the first of a trilogy.
On one level, they’re smart to go with Tatum and Kunis, two well-known and well-liked actors. Tatum’s massive 2012 (21 Jump Street, Magic Mike) is still fresh on people’s minds, and he’ll be coming off 22 Jump Street. Of course, this is a hard sci-fi film, and Tatum sports some ridiculous facial hair as a character that’s apparently “part wolf.” Tatum’s not yet a good-enough actor that he can obscure his looks and people will still want to see him. And Kunis has high visibility, but not necessarily high bankability: the fact that she’s the title character is likely a test of her Q-rating.
COMPETITION: Jupiter Ascending hits July 18, against the not-very-anticipated Planes: Fire And Rescue, which is targeting a whole different demographic. The summer is nicely spaced out, to the point where it’s surprising no one tried out a more proven commodity against this film. It arrives a week after Dawn Of The Planet of the Apes, though, which might be an issue.
LONGEVITY: The trilogy plan is in place, so Wachowski and the WB are clearly thinking ahead. Beyond that, we’d have to know more about the plot for this sci-fi gumbo.
NEED FOR SPEED
POWER PLAYERS: None.
BASED UPON: A popular line of off-road racing games.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: The Need For Speed games were never known for their stories or drama. The studio has compensated by cutting trailers and early footage that emphasize a whole lotta’ car crashes for the key young male demographic. They’re also pushing this with Aaron Paul in the lead: his fame comes exclusively from his association with Breaking Bad, a pop culture sensation that now, let’s face it, is just another basic cable hit that’s no longer on the air. Casting Kid Cudi in a supporting role is another demographic grab, not unlike the rappers that were cast in the Fast and Furious movies, an obvious model. But calling him Scott Mescudi in the ad campaign seems like an overestimation, given that the music stars in the Furious films kept their stage names and had considerably higher profiles.
COMPETITION:Need For Speed is a candidate to grab a Super Bowl TV spot, which would give the film a big boost ahead of its March 14 release. It opens against Tyler Perry’s The Single Moms Club, which will serve an entirely different demographic. But it also opens against Focus’ bawdy indie comedy Bad Words with Jason Bateman. That one made the festival circuit, but now that Focus is being run by the FIlmDistrict guys, they could be taking a broader strategy in releasing their films: Bad Words might end up serving a similar demographic, limiting the Need For Speed audience.
LONGEVITY: They made seven Fast and the Furious movies based off a single magazine article about underground racing. If Need For Speedhits, no one’s going to have a problem replicating the appeal.
DIVERGENT
POWER PLAYERS: Shailene Woodley, director Neil Burger (The Illusionist), Kate Winslet
BASED UPON: A best-selling series of YA novels.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: It doesn’t even seem like you need to buy a ticket for this film to get a sequel made: confidence is high enough that the studio is already marching ahead with dates for follow-ups, claiming that director Burger can’t even return, because he’ll still be finishing the first film. For their sake, they’d better know what they’re doing or this is going to be another Mortal Instruments situation where everyone goes all-in on a sequel that investors refuse to bankroll. Release dates are set, and pre-production marches on for these sequels, and the only thing on anyone’s mind appears to be speed.
Woodley is very close to being The Next Big Thing: she was long rumored to garner an Academy Award nomination for The Descendants, but that didn’t happen. And her supporting role in The Spectacular Now won her fans, but the film wasn’t the breakout hit people expected. She could have owned this summer as well: she has a role in the upcoming The Fault In Our Stars but was cut from The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Her big shot should be in this film with an ad campaign that’s fully invested into turning her into the next Jennifer Lawrence. Fortunately, she’s just as frisky on the interview circuit, which helps immeasurably. Burger and Winslet have no real franchise experience, but Winslet remains a name that can get adult audience-goers into seats in the right project. And Burger dabbled in an Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune adaptation, suggesting a larger interest in franchise world-building.
COMPETITION: March 21 sees Divergent open against Muppets Most Wanted, which could be bad for both given the similar demographics. But frankly, if the Muppetsfilm doesn’t supercharge their marketing campaign soon, Divergent could blow it out of the water. The mega-budgeted Noah opens a week later, but that’s currently the kind of question mark that suggests Divergent won’t lose a chunk of its audience.
LONGEVITY: The new world of post-Harry Potter franchise building in regards to these fantasy series is to quickly schedule the films based on these books, and to split the final novel into a supersized two-parter. It works for finite stories, but it also means that, within six or seven years, a successful Divergent series might already be forgotten.
THE LEGO MOVIE
POWER PLAYERS: Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs)
BASED UPON: A branding opportunity to push Lego products. I mean, come on.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: This is a veritable branding orgy, since Legos have been a hit in almost every household since men rode dinosaurs to work. The intention was to push the brand and its various offshoots (the film features endless licensed characters in Lego form), but Lord and Miller are also the mischievous jokers behind 21 Jump Street. There’s a massive cast attached to this film, but the real selling points are the Legos themselves. The question is whether the slapstick is enough to distinguish this from the endless straight-to-DVD Lego ‘toons that are pushed onto kids every few months. We’ll guess yes.
COMPETITION: The Lego Movie opens in a relatively underserved period for kids’ films, and, sharing a release date with the older-skewing The Monuments Men, it’s guaranteed to open huge.
LONGEVITY: Legos are universal. They’ll make 70 sequels.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
POWER PLAYERS: Marvel producer Kevin Feige.
BASED UPON: An inconsistently successful comic line that has fluctuated in-and-out of circulation for Marvel since the ‘70s.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: The ad campaign hasn’t kicked in for this odd genre mash-up, but Disney hopes that Marvel and outer-space are good enough hooks for now. The material is unusual: a series of somewhat-familiar faces (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana), really familiar voices (Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel), and unrecognizable famous faces (Benicio Del Toro, John C. Reilly) all star in a big, wacky space story that plays like a jokey Star Wars. The narrative ties into the other Marvel films (as was teased in the end credits sequence for Thor: The Dark World), but not too directly, as it appears no Avenger will be showing up in this film. For those craving continuity, the angle is that Guardians sets various things in motion involving big bad Thanos, who was seen in the end credits to The Avengers but apparently will not figure into Avengers: Age Of Ultron. So get ready to witness set-ups for plot points that won’t pay off for another couple of years!
COMPETITION: Many claim Marvel was secretly sweating as Guardians was set to open against Fifty Shades Of Grey, a film with a much larger fanbase than the small crowd that follows the Guardians comics. But Grey has left Guardians all by its lonesome, where it has to tango with the second weekend of Hercules. It also gets a full weekend to itself before Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s very likely that Guardians is the last big hit of the summer.
LONGEVITY: Guardians seems like it’s massively broadening the Marvel universe, but the studio can only release so many new films. Thor and Iron Man seem like Marvel foundational pieces, but Guardians could end up being just a brick in the massive Marvel puzzle. They can afford to take a risk, and they can also afford to take a bath on an underperforming film. This could be so successful that they’re forced to try a sequel, but if not, it’s likely to serve as a backdoor into yet another new Marvel series.
THE EQUALIZER
POWER PLAYERS: Denzel Washington, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass).
BASED UPON: Before becoming an amusing punchline in The Wolf Of Wall Street, The Equalizer was a hit series with an unmistakably-awesome Stuart Copeland theme.
FRANCHISE BONAFIDES: The project has been in development for a very long time. Its basic premise (a badass problem-solver listed in the phone book) suited to any number of leading men. For a while, Russell Crowe was slated to do the deed for director Paul Haggis, but the re-teaming of Washington and Fuqua seems more viable, particularly considering Fuqua is responsible for Washington winning his second Oscar for Training Day.
Washington has become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood despite no franchises to his name. It appears to be an actual effort: he’s recently turned down roles in Fast and Furious 7 and, if rumors are true, the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman. Some suggested that 2 Guns would spawn the first Washington-led sequel, but that film was a rare underperformer for Denzel. Now, he gives it a shot with a common collaborator in Fuqua, who’s coming off the sequel-generating Olympus Has Fallen. Both men assure this will be a franchise-level event (Training Day will likely be prominent in the ad campaign), and it’s likely to be one of the bigger attractions of the early fall, particularly for Washington’s usually-dependable fanbase.
COMPETITION: This opens up against the children’s film The Boxtrolls, but not only is that film after an entirely different demographic, but a children’s film seems like it would have limited appeal opening just as kids have gotten settled into the new school year. David Fincher’s Gone Girl opens the week after, but it’s likely going to be battling with a still-strong The Equalizer for the same audience.
LONGEVITY: Washington’s been a nomad of a leading man, mostly because his films are cheap enough to become solidly profitable, though often less than memorable. He brings in adult males, however, and there aren’t many franchises for them. This could fill that void, even if it’s just junky action, which it likely will be.
So there is our list our list of 12 potential movie franchise starters for the coming year (and weekend!). Which do you think will sizzle and which will fizzle? Let us know in the comments section below!