10 Movies That Were Meant To Reboot Franchises But Flopped Hard

10) Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Fans were thrilled when Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg teamed up once again to do another Indiana Jones film in 2008. However, it had been nearly twenty years since the last movie – could they recreate the magic? The answer: no.

What with the lack of Nazis, dodgy CGI and the oft-derided insertion of aliens into the Indiana Jones universe, there aren’t many people that would stand up for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Infamously, fans often pretend that the whole thing never happened.

Conflicting evidence exists for whether this was meant to set up a new series of films or not, but the inclusion of Shia La Beouf as Indy’s obnoxious son Mutt does seem to suggest they were looking to extend the franchise’s life. Now that Indy 5 is happening once again, let’s hope Spielberg has learnt from his mistakes on this movie.

9) The Wolfman

The Universal Monster films were perhaps the first Cinematic Universe, with the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman starring in their own films before coming together for several all-star monster mash-up movies.

It makes sense, then, that the studio has tried to revive the franchise a few times in more recent years, with the likes of Van Helsing and 2010’s The Wolfman. It was the latter that was really meant to resurrect the series, though – something it spectacularly failed to do. The weight of the franchise meant that the film had too many people interfering with it, ending up with a muddled, unfocused final product.

The universe has since been rebooted once again, with 2014’s Dracula Untold being the first of a planned long list of movies including The Invisible Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Mummy. Let’s hope they’re able to do a bit better this time, because this whole thing really does have a lot of potential.