The VOD circuit has become famous for turning well-known and popular movies into unlikely franchises that span multiple installments, but the mere existence of Screamers: The Hunting goes to show that absolutely nothing is safe from sequelization.
The 1995 original may have become something of a cult favorite in the years since its 1995 release, but that doesn’t compensate for the fact Screamers earned less than $6 million at the box office on a $14 million budget, and was greeted with an apathetic shrug by critics while being ignored by audiences.
![screamers-the-hunting](https://wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/screamers-the-hunting.jpg)
For reasons unknown to anybody except the people who made it, The Hunting quietly landed 14 years later, with bargain basement stalwart Lance Henriksen and a young pre-Arrow Stephen Amell among the cast. In a turn of events nobody could have possibly predicted, reviews were exponentially worse the second time around, not a good look for the legacy follow-up to a film that wasn’t exactly regarded as a classic to begin with.
That being said, the weird and wonderful world of streaming has a way of throwing up all sorts of unexpected surprises, and FlixPatrol naming Screamers: The Hunting as one of iTunes’ most-watched features is definitely one of the biggest we’ve come across in a while.
A rescue team awakens from two months in stasis to investigate a distress call coming from an “abandoned” planet, only to happen upon a cabal of murderous robots with designs on commandeering a ship, heading to Earth, and decimating the human race. Sometimes even bad movies get sequels, but in the case of Screamers: The Hunting, that doesn’t mean we’d encourage you to watch them.
Published: Dec 10, 2022 11:38 am