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It often feels like every successful movie gets a sequel. It can be incredibly annoying, but there are many times where a sequel gets made that makes sense. On the opposite side of the coin, there are huge, standout films that feel like they're primed for more stories to be told, but they never get that chance.
With nearly every superhero movie getting numerous sequels and other blockbusters being churned out, why don't we take a look at movies that came out and never had a sequel made, despite fans clamoring for more. All of the movies listed below lend themselves to sequels, and I give some ideas of what could happen in them.
Hollywood, please take these ideas from me. However, you need to give me money and an IMDB writer credit.
1. Demolition Man (1993)
Let's start with one of the greatest sci-fi action movies to come out of the '90s or any era: Demolition Man. The film follows a police officer, John Spartan, and a criminal, Simon Phoenix, engaged in a ruthless battle against one another. After a deadly incident, both men are sent to Cryo-Prison. Phoenix is unfrozen in 2032, and starts MDKing people (Murder Death Kill). Spartan is unfrozen to stop him, and the two battle it out again. The leader of San Angeles (San Diego and Los Angeles combined after the Franchise Wars) is Raymond Cocteau, who turns out to be behind all the mayhem and releasing Phoenix. There's a final battle, which leads to Phoenix being MDKed.
There is a huge, vast world with a lot of areas to explore, but a lot of those areas have already been explained, if only briefly. So instead of doing a sequel, may I present to you a prequel? This prequel explores The Franchise Wars. These wars aren't necessarily an actual war, though. It's an intense drama where the US's monopoly laws are lifted and corporations fight to acquire other companies until only one is left standing. In this case, Taco Bell comes out the winner. There's not one moment of action in this movie. It's a boardroom drama.
2. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)
Popstar is a mockumentary by The Lonely Island following Conner4Real, the breakout star of the fictional rap group Style Boyz. Connor4Real is on the precipice of releasing his second solo album, Connquest. His first album--Thriller, Also--was a huge success, working with former Style Boyz member Kid Contact as producer. His follow-up was critically panned and Conner ostracized himself from the people that actually cared for him. Conner4Real deals with a failing album, a crumbling tour, and reuniting with his fellow Style Boyz.
It is a perfect mockumentary. The songs are fantastic, and the film is hilarious. It's a movie that begs for another sequel. Why not follow Conner4Real as he reunites with the Style Boyz and tries to figure out how to be a part of a group again and not let his ego get in the way? The audience can watch the process of making a new album, and you can even follow what Hunter the Hungry has been up to.
3. Clueless (1995)
Clueless is a movie that encapsulates what a rich kid in Beverly Hills lived like during the '90s. Starring Alicia Silverstone as Cher, the film follows her journey through high school, hanging out with friends, going to parties, and playing matchmaker between friends and teachers. It doesn't matter if you fully identify with the characters in the movie because it's a satire of that lifestyle and what it means to be popular.
That movie arrived in theaters in 1995. It's been multiple decades, so what's happened to Cher? Did she end up with Josh (Paul Rudd) for more than just a fling? Did she move on? More importantly, what happens to Cher when she becomes a mother or even a grandmother to an infant? There's a lot to explore here, especially with a character with a lot of heart who's a bit vapid. Because of her upper-class upbringing, it could be an interesting route to exploring her children raising very young grandkids in a middle-class lifestyle.
4. Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Drew Goddard, the writer behind the Daredevil TV series, Cloverfield, and World War Z directed one of the most bizarre horror/comedies of the 2010s. The film starts as a slasher horror film, until you realize the scenario a group of teens are in--going on vacation in a cabin in the woods--is being controlled by an underground network that concocts fake horror-movie scenarios, then sacrifices people to The Ancient Ones, a group of subterranean gods. This is a globewide effort, and if everyone fails, said gods will destroy humanity.
By the time the audience gets to the full reveal, they're bombarded with a world that they want to know more about. Sure, the world after this movie is destroyed--at least we're led to believe that. But what about what happens with rituals in other countries? Not all the rituals are the same and each one is specific to the area they take place in. How did this program all come together? How were all these monsters created? There are so many questions that could easily be explored in this movie. If you focus on how and why the modern version of this system came together, that would be a dynamite movie. Or, we can just jump forward and see how The Ancient Ones took over the world and how survivors are dealing with day-to-day life.
5. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Taking two of the most iconic villains from '80s horror movies, Freddy vs. Jason pitted, well, Freddy Krueger--the master of nightmares--against Jason Vorhees--the master of killing people with a machete--against one another. Freddy was trapped in Hell and used killings by Jason to make people think Freddy was still around, which allowed Freddy's powers to come back. After numerous people died, Freddy and Jason fought to the death.
From there, people wanted more, and who can blame them? There was a plan for Evil Dead's Ash to be in a sequel, but that idea never got out of pre-production and became a comic book series by Dynamite Entertainment. There are plenty of horror villains that could be in a sequel to this movie. Chucky, Michael Myers, Pinhead, or even Candyman could be a worthy opponent to the two titular characters. You don't even need a really solid plot. People just want to see a bunch of scary monsters fight each other.
6. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
Speaking of Freddy, one of the character's best appearances in a movie comes by way of Wes Craven's New Nightmare. The film follows Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street, portraying a fictionalized version of herself. Langenkamp is a mother now and balancing acting and being a parent. Wes Craven, also playing himself, pitches her to star in a new Freddy movie, and things get a bit weird. Freddy shows up in her dreams and real life, and wants to take her son. However, it's technically a demon disguised as Freddy. The film is an interesting take on the culture of horror films where sequels are churned out to milk the series. The concept is brilliant, and it's one of my personal favorite Freddy movies.
So why can't we look at Wes Craven's movies and do this again? Is this highly derivative and redundant? It can be. Sadly, Wes Craven is no longer with us. My first thought was to take the concept and apply it to the Scream franchise. However, that's already a background story for Scream 2 and 3. And sure, you can take the idea of the demon who took the form of Freddy and figure out a new story, but I have an alternative: Take Craven's movie The People Under The Stairs and center the movie around a reboot of that film, set in the world that New Nightmare took place in. The writers of this reboot want to study cases similar to this story and find that it's based on real events that became a cold case file. The writers continue their search for these people that abused and tortured people in a house filled with traps, and the writers themselves become victims of these horrible people.
7. Last Action Hero (1993)
Speaking of movies that were a commentary on movie culture, Last Action Hero was a film starring the biggest action star of the '80s and '90s, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie takes place in the real world where a kid gets a magical ticket that allows him to travel into a movie and allows the characters in that movie to enter the real world. The movie tackles the over-the-top nature of action movies, with explosions, violence, and a disregard for the laws of physics--and how those ideals do not translate to real life.
When Last Action Hero gets to the end of Act 2 and into Act 3, the baddie of the movie starts grabbing monsters and villains from other movies and takes them into the real world. That idea of bringing characters from other movies into the real world is a really cool one, even though it goes against the concept of how ideas in movies don't translate to the real world--a rule Last Action Hero broke with Death entering the real world. Regardless, letting these villains have a variation of their powers when they enter the real world is an interesting route to take for a sequel, and you don't need Schwarzenegger for the sequel--although, Jack Slater should at least make a cameo.
8. The Warriors (1979)
The Warriors is a brilliant movie from 1979 about cartoonish gang life in New York City. Each gang has their own territory and costumed theme, such as the Baseball Furies, who all dress like baseball players; The Orphans, who have blue shirts and can't afford anything else; and the Rogues, a denim-wearing group of grifters. The Warriors get accused of killing the leader of the the Gramercy Riffs (Cyrus) during a gang peace summit, and The Warriors have to race across NYC to get home to Coney Island without being murdered by every gang in the city--and also, prove they didn't kill Cyrus.
This is a movie begging for a sequel. How has gang culture changed in NYC in the 40 years that followed the events of this film? Are The Warriors still a gang? What happened to the former--or maybe even current--members of that gang? The sequel could follow Luther, the man who killed Cyrus and is a member of the Rogues. It's assumed the Riffs killed him in the original, but what if after that, he went to prison. Luther could come out of prison, try to take control of the Rogues, and hunt down the remaining members of The Warriors, while battling other gangs who consider him an enemy after killing Cyrus.
9. Street Fighter (1994)
Out of all the video game movies ever made, the one at the bottom of the list in terms of quality is 1994's Street Fighter. It's like the writers took a look at the characters in the game and said, "Let's take those characters, forget about 90% of their backstories, put a few famous actors in it, have a bunch of silly fights, and make a movie out of that!" The film follows Guile, Chun-Li, Ken, Ryu, Cammy, and others try to take down Bison and his cast of familiar characters because Bison is evil and loves killing people's parents on Tuesdays.
It's a bad movie, but it's fun. Yes, the very weird world this movie created has as much to do with the Street Fighter game as Fast X has to do with underground car racing culture. What if there were an actual Street Fighter tournament? In the years that followed the demise of Bison, the next generation of martial artists speak of the legend of Guile beating Bison and want to know if they could beat Guile--even though Guile is a lot older now--so they have a tournament to determine who is worthy. That being said, it needs to be fun and engaging. You can't make a cheesy sequel to a cheesy movie for the gags. The sequel needs to take the world of Street Fighter and elevate it. However, it can still be fun and doesn't have to take itself too seriously.
10. Escape from New York (1981)
Yes, there is a sequel to Escape from New York, but it's a complete retread of the first movie. And this is about movies that never got the sequel they deserved, right? In Escape from New York, which takes place in a dystopian future of 1997, Manhattan is turned into a maximum security prison. Special Forces member Snake Plissken is sent into the city to rescue the president, whose escape pod landed there, and Snake is injected with tiny explosive devices that will go off if he doesn't rescue the president in 22 hours. So Snake heads into the city-prison, fights off people for an hour of runtime, stumbles across a cassette tape with the secrets to nuclear fusion, and saves the president. The original sequel is the same, but replaces "president" with "president's daughter," "New York" with "Los Angeles," and "nuclear fusion" with "EMP doomsday device."
There's a lot of room to grow in the world created by John Carpenter. Where does Plissken take the nuclear fusion cassette tape to? By the end of the first movie, it's apparent that the president will have a vendetta against Plissken for giving him a cassette tape with a song on it. Just set the movie in the future and have Kurt Russell reprise his role as Snake, and have the character hunkered down off the grid, avoiding the US government and president who is now serving his lifelong term as ruler of the US. The government finds Snake, and he has to fight them off.
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