With the abysmal performance of The Golden Compass and the frankly unfilmable second two books in the series, it looks like His Dark Materials will be another unfinished film series.
What are some other ones? A Series of Unfortunate Events springs to mind - the first three books were condensed into one film, which did terribly at the box office although by all accounts it should have been a smash, and it’ll probably never be continued.
A less recent example is Disney’s beginning Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain with their 1985 film, The Black Cauldron, which contained the first few books of the series…to never be continued.
I’d hardly call a $100 million box office gross “terrible.” The movie made a profit but wasn’t a smash. There have been far worse performers that got sequels.
Are they gonna do another Noah Cross (James Patterson series of books) movie?
Or another Fletch movie? Who wrote those books, again?
Sir Rhosis
It just occurs to me, did I get the character name right in the Patterson books?Morgan Freeman starred in two movies as the character. For some reason, I keep thinking I’m wrong on the name. . .
Hopefully in a few years, someone will just start again from scratch with their own interpretation of it - in a way, that’s a shame, because the movie has quite a pleasing texture to it and any future actor playing Olaf will have to be compared to Jim Carrey’s version, but it could probably be done.
I’m never going to see Paul Bettany and Russell Crowe on the high seas again. I really enjoyed Master & Commander, and I would love to see all O’Brian’s books turned into movies. I want my drunken sloths! I want Killick and endless coffee! I want Diana! I mean, they’ve got the boat, and the uniforms have to be floating around out there somewhere. Now slap some extensions on Mr. Crowe, feed him some cheeseburgers, and get filming.
Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings was never finished. The first film, which covers only the first half of the story, wasn’t considered enough of a financial success, and the studio declined to fund the second film.
I think it was Gregory MacDonald, if memory serves. There actually was a second Fletch movie with Chevy Chase, called Fletch Lives!. The three people who saw it gave mixed reviews.
Is it possible I’m the first person to mention Buckaroo Banzai?
Fletch Lives! was not based on any of the Fletch books. It was entirely made up for the movie.
If they ever decide to do a Fletch series, I hope they re-do the first one to actually reflect the character as written. There is no relationship between MacDonald’s Fletch and Chevy Chase’s Fletch.
I seriously doubt if Disney ever intended to do any more Prydain stories after The Black Cauldron
When they made the Horatuio Hornblower movie with Gregory Peck, there were only three books (and a handful of stories, later disowned) that gor smooshed together into one movie, so that case doesn’t count, in my mind. But A&E never did any more of the Hornblower series after they did the first few, whichj is pretty disappointing.
I wish they’d done more of the Nero Wolfe books, too.
There are plenty of series hat never saw more than a couple of films at most. In addition to those already mentioned:
Matt Helm
Remo Williams
Doc Savage
John MacDonald’s books
Mrs. Pollifax
Hercule Poirot
Things like James Bond, where most of the titles have been filmed – some more than once (Casino Royale 3 times, Thunderball twice) are the exception.
I was also disappointed that Nicholas Meyer never got to do a Judge Dee series after making the TV movie Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders.
It was so obviously a pilot (and ran as an ABC Movie of the Week, which was one of the pilot venues.) Obviously, the studio suits balked, probably at the idea of a show that was both a period costuime drama and withh all Asian characters*. They gave the star a series, Khigh Deigh, a series as a detective, Khan! (complete with exclamation point), but it was set in modern-day San Francisco, and there really wasn’t a reason to watch it.
There had been an earlier British TV series of Judge Dee stories, but it only ran six episodes. I’d dearly like to see it, but AFAIK it’s never been available on home video. Or even bootleg.
*Khigh Deigh, despite playing Judge Dee, Khan (!), characters in Kung Fu, and the Red Chinese agent Wo Fat on Hawaii Five-O, didn’t have a drop of Asian blood in him, I was surprised to find. AFAIK, he was the only cas member of Judge Dee that wasn’t of oriental ancestry.
Tomb Raider was supposed to be huge franchise. Why they made film number 2 is beyond me. One did well but did the vast majority of its business on opening weekend and of that the most was on Friday, not Saturday. That is a very bad sign.
I remember that they thought V.I. Warshawski was going to be a franchise.
I agree. The first Fletch book was a perfect screenplay (it’s almost all dialog) and all they had to do was shoot what MacDonald had written and they’d have a fine film.
Long before Peter Jackson completed the entire trilogy, there was an animated version of LoTR that covered Fellowship and part of Two Towers.
Visually speaking it was pretty nifty, since a lot of the animation was done by combining regular animation with live footage that was painted over (the look is very much like A Scanner Darkly, which used the same concept).
I have to admit, it wasn’t much good, or at least it wasn’t when I saw it at 16 right after finishing the books. I guess that explains why there was no Part 2.
I really enjoyed Master & Commander, and I would love to see all O’Brian’s books turned into movies. I want my drunken sloths! I want Killick and endless coffee! I want Diana! I mean, they’ve got the boat, and the uniforms have to be floating around out there somewhere. Now slap some extensions on Mr. Crowe, feed him some cheeseburgers, and get filming.