5 Famous Movies That Are Getting Unspeakably Bad Sequels
Remember when the announcement of a new sequel to your favorite movie made you go, "Oh cool," instead of, "STOP MURDERING MY CHILDHOOD, YOU ASSHOLES"? We barely do either. The lesson has been learned by now that for every Godfather II, The Empire Strikes Back, or Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj, there are dozens of half-assed cash grabs by movie executives who see sequels as the path of least resistance to their next caviar-powered Bugatti.
And, as improbable as it sounds, it's about to get much worse. Proving that there's no franchise out there that Hollywood is unwilling to defile and befoul, here's what's being explosively shat out as we speak:
The Rocky Spinoff About Apollo Creed's Grandson
If you absolutely must do a movie based on a non-Rocky character from the Rocky franchise, we'd personally recommend either a Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago origin prequel (or maybe a combination where they meet/fall in love/fight crime). MGM has other plans: they've already greenlit a spinoff about Apollo Creed ... 's pampered grandson. It's going to be called Creed, appropriately enough, and star Michael B. Jordan, who's already a seasoned veteran of ill-conceived franchise revamps.
To be fair, the nipple resemblance is uncanny.
Jordan will play a rich kid called Adonis (seriously), who, "despite his parents' objections, wants nothing more than to follow in his grandfather's footsteps," according to SlashFilm. So he'll ... be repeatedly bested by a monosyllabic palooka from south Philly and then murdered by a blonde, even less-syllabic communist? Probably not, but it's still worrying that the plot sounds like a complete reversal of the "underdog gets a shot at glory" formula that makes Rocky good -- it's kind of hard to root for a chiseled, trust-fund kid named after the Greek god of beauty to get the girl and have his dreams come true.
One thing you can count on is another appearance by a grizzled, decrepit trainer, only this time that part will be played by Sylvester Stallone, who is also "substantially involved in the writing process" (so expect a lot of "yo's"), according to director Ryan Coogler. And sure, Sly has written some good stuff, but keep in mind that his entire body of work is ... let's say a mixed bag:
We're still waiting for the movie about Tony Manero's dancing rival's nephew's optometrist.
After a surprisingly good reboot movie and a surprisingly even better sequel, it seems like the 21 Jump Street franchise can do no wrong -- it would take, we don't know, combining the series with a tired, already over-sequel-ized sci-fi property for the studio to blow this one. So, hey, guess what they wanna do.
What's next, Ghostbusters meets Police Acade- we'll be right back.
Yep, possibly the most stupefying information to come out of the Sony hacking debacle could be the emails between Sony co-chair Amy Pascal and Jonah Hill, in which there is serious consideration given to merging the 21 Jump Street and Men in Black franchises. In the emails, Hill describes the bizarre concept as "clean and rad and powerful," which suggests he may have been suffering from overexposure to Seth Rogen's secondhand smoke.
Nonetheless, "21 Men From Jump Street Who Are Also Wearing Black" appears to be under serious consideration, with an exec admitting, "We don't have a script yet, so we'll be greenlighting the movie off the concept and the talent involved."
Pictured: The talent.
We can't imagine anyone who saw Men in Black 3 thinking the concept could possibly be milked any further, but it's easy to see the appeal for the studio -- not only can they continue making crappy sequels but also combine those sequels with other sequels to increase the potential output of crap by a factor of thousands. Win-win!
Of course, there's always the possibility that some of that Jump magic will rub off on whoever ends up directing this thing (so far, Phil Lord and Chris Miller are in only as producers) and it'll actually be good. That could happen, right?
There Will Be Another
Like Star Wars, the whole Indiana Jones franchise now belongs to Disney since George Lucas lost that lightsaber duel to Bob Iger . So, what are they planning to do with this beloved series? Let it die an honorable death? Not risk its reputation by allowing the crappy movies to outnumber the good ones?
What scholars have dubbed "The Simpsons Syndrome."
Unfortunately, in Hollywood that's known as "crazy talk," and is possibly felonious under local statutes -- Disney has made it clear that there's no way they're gonna let a potentially lucrative property sit around gathering dust like some dangerously magical relic stored in a government warehouse. For a while every movie website assured us that Bradley Cooper would play the next Indy, but the studio shot down the reboot rumor ... while confirming they do want more Indiana Jones movies. They're just "pacing themselves," Iger said, to give Star Wars a chance to shine.
What does this mean? That, in all likelihood, the new movie won't reach theaters until at least 2020, at which point its non-rebooted star will be 78 years old.
He still hates snakes, but now he loves the breakfast buffet at Golden Corral.
Keep in mind that Harrison Ford is not in reality a swashbuckling, whip-cracking space smuggler. He's just a normal man, and an increasingly fragile one at that. He recently broke his leg while harrumphing around inside the Millennium Falcon for the new Star Wars. So it's probably safe to assume that there won't be much in the way of whitewater raft escapes or tank-back riding for him in the sequel, unless there's room in the budget for replacing at least a dozen dead, elderly stuntmen gathered from local rest homes.
Even the Studio Is Dreading the Next Da Vinci Code Sequel
Bad news for Da Vinci Code fans, if any still exist: Inferno, the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard adaptation of yet another bullshit-filled Dan Brown novel that was scheduled for release in late 2015, has been pushed back to October of 2016 because of reasons. Maybe this indicates that Sony doesn't have a ton of faith in the film, or maybe it's due to something perfectly non-embarrassing that they'd totally announce if it wasn't for this appointment they're crazy late for or whatever.
All images herein are unrelated to the present discussion.
There actually is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay: the original date just so happens to coincide with the releases of the new Star Wars movie (and the latest Mission: Impossible Tom Cruise karate-runfest is set to open a week later). So, yeah, that was probably a good move. On top of that, Hanks/Howard's Angels & Demons performed "decently" but didn't exactly give the bigwigs high hopes regarding the franchise's longevity. And on top of that, Inferno is essentially a do-over -- the original plan was to film an adaptation of another hoobajoob-filled Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol, but that idea seems to be swirling down the toilet because screenwriter after screenwriter (including Brown himself) has failed to come up with an acceptable script.
"Who writes this crap?" -the guy who writes this crap.
So now it's Inferno, with David "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" Koepp as the writer. Does this mean this is the one where we find out aliens are behind the Illuminati? We can only hope.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 sucks so hard, it apparently achieved the impossible: even Sony Pictures (the same company that unleashed Grown Ups 2 on an unsuspecting world) is embarrassed and just wants to move on. That's good, right? Sure, until you remember what "moving on" means in movie executive terms: yep, another reboot.
A year ago, Sony was so confident in their Spider-Man franchise that they announced they'd be making a new Spidey-related movie every year. While this looked promising for our dream of a Peter Porker, Spectacular Spider-Ham film, the plan quickly fell apart after everyone saw how terrible ASM 2 actually is. The announced Sinister Six spinoff is still on track, but it's rumored that Sony plans to use it to "soft reboot" the franchise -- as in, have a new guy show up in the red duds and pretend like nothing happened.
"'Sup, Aunt May? Don't you recognize your favorite nephew?"
That idea is looking increasingly feasible after the hacking clusterfuck revealed the depths of Sony's desperation: while they were still assuring people that ASM 3 was definitely coming out in 2018, they were considering restarting the series as an animated comedy and/or lending the character to Marvel, who would introduce a new Peter Parker in Captain America 3. Either way, Andrew Garfield should probably start looking for a new job.
If there's one consolation, it's that, according to a leaked document called "Rebooting Spider-Man," even the executives are fucking tired of superhero origin stories. Hopefully this means they're finally starting at source material more recent than 1973, and we can maybe see something interesting out of the massive canon of Spidey stories.
Come on, Sony. Do the right thing.
While you're here, check out 5 Huge Upcoming Movies That Are Completely Doomed and 4 Bad Movies That Were Hilariously Sure of a Sequel.
