As, indeed, did K-9, eventually.
Paul Williams as a program about a kiddie show host named Marvin the Martian .
Stormbreaker aka Alex Rider: Stormbreaker was meant to be the first installment in a franchise based on the Alex Rider YA novel series (basically James Bond, Jr.). It was a box office bomb, and the franchise died on the vine.
There is now, however, a streaming series based on the novels, on the IMDbTV channel (which is somehow a thing that exists - it’s a streaming channel on Amazon Prime run by the Internet Movie Database website).
When the triplets were born, they were already testing the waters for some kind of sequel, or continuation, or whatever, when Fred MacMurray eventually refused to do the show anymore, and Ernie was too old to be a kid, because the last line of the episode on which the triplets are born, is Robbie saying something about his wife “and my three sons.”
Kinda like on Mom, currently, when it was pretty obvious that either Anna Faris, Allison Janney, or both were mumbling about leaving, when Kristen Johnston joined the cast and her character moved in with Marjorie-- the two are now poised to become a surrogate mother & daughter so there’s still a “Mom” relationship. They even brought in Marjorie’s estranged son in for a reconciliation. And Jill has been trying to have a baby for seasons; now she has a very serious boyfriend.
I’m predicting that now that Faris is gone, Janney will either leave as well, or fade to the background, but everyone else will either be a mom or a daughter in some way.
Originally there was supposed to be a fourth installment of “The Mummy” series with Brendan Fraser. It is certainly set up at the end of
“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” where Jonathan leaves for Peru “where there are no mummies” only with a on screen note that the following year mummies were discovered in Peru. But the next installment “The Mummy:Rise of the Aztec” was never filmed.
To elaborate on the Die Another Day example, apparently they got so far as to write the script and cast the film before the plug was pulled due to the truely horrible critical reception to the film, they were fully expecting fans to love the movie so much they’d buy into Halle Berry’s NSA Spy. It also explains why Michael Madsen has so much screen time as Halle Berry’s boss for such a nothing roll. In addition they were planning on two more Bond films with Pierce Brosnan before that film also torpedoed his own Bond career.
Tuesday’s FBI Most Wanted had the stench of a backdoor pilot. A new character was introduced who the main cast seemed to already know, who was “quirky” and “in-teresting” and always got there ahead of the main characters. Combine that with the fact it was the stupidest episode of the entire series and seemed to be written by people that had never watched the show, and maybe it was a pilot.
I recently re-watched I, Frakenstein. It was a bad movie, but I actually liked it more than Underworld. Both were created by the same guy, Kevin Grevioux (who appears in both in small parts - he’s a big guy with an almost comically deep, gravelly voice). Like Underworld, I, Frankenstein was intended as the first installment of a film franchise, and potentially a part of an Underworld Extended Universe. It bombed at the box office; despite that, the next installment was apparently in some stage of pre-production before the plug was pulled. Unlike its titular hero, it now appears to be not mostly dead but all dead.
There was an abortive Frankenstein TV series back in the 1950s called Tales of Frankenstein. They made only a pilot episode, and never any others. The pilot’s in the public domain, and I’ve got a copy.
The Monster depicted in the first episode did indeed have the neck-bolted flat-topped appearance of the Universal monster. But the series was as dead as Universal’s Dark Universe franchise.
Tales of Frankenstein on YouTube
I just finished re-watching The Losers. It’s based on a DC comic, which was released through their “adult” Vertigo imprint. It’s a pretty straight forward action flick with some comedy (no supers). It was clearly meant to the be the first installment of a series if not a full franchise: the main bad guy gets away at the end, setting up the potential sequels.
It had a fair amount of star power - Idris Elba, Chris Evans, Zoe Saldana, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It just didn’t seem to make an impression, and sank out of sight along with the series.
Agents of SHIELD was supposed to have a Mockingbird spinoff and a Ghost Rider spinoff (and possibly some others I’m forgetting about) but neither ended up happening.
Force Seven was a failed spin off of CHiPs. It’s described as “A secret LAPD unit is dedicated to the preservation of human life using martial arts.”
Do they have five Foxy women, and every episode has a lame joke? Cuz that would be awesome!
I remember that one. LAPD ninjas. Even for CHiPs, it was goofy.
Sounds like that script should’ve been sat on for 15 years then retooled and handed to Chuck Norris; probably would have been perfect for his show, especially after Disneyfication set in.
Can’t find a link, but somewhere there’s a newspaper interview from 1993 in which Quincy Jones excitedly hypes up his new animated series, “Cool Like That.” Only one episode ever made it to air, in the form of a TV movie called “A Cool Like That Christmas.”
Having your pilot episode be a Christmas Special to backdoor into a series is fairly common especially for animation, because it means even if it’s not picked up for a full series there’s a hope it will become a syndicated yearly Christmas special at least.
The Simpsons famously started their run with a “Christmas Special” before officially starting a few months later.
Even earlier than that, Mr. Magoo’s A Christmas Carol lead to the prime-time animated series The Famous Adventures of Mister Magoo in 1964, in which the nearsighted hero of UPA cartoons was shoehorned into famous works of fiction in half-hour long productions . A sort of Classics Illustrated on TV. Or a proto-“Wishbone”
It flopped and lasted only one season. They hadn’t tumbled to the fact that it was a “Christmas” special that was the attraction, not that it was a prime-time TV cartoon. There were already several of those.
I wish someone had replied “Huh?” To this so you could say, “Catch up!”