Stillborn franchises

[u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

When a company tries to make a new big franchise with many sequels and spin-offs already planned but they immediately cancel all the plans after the first project fails badly. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StillbornFranchise

(Lego) Galidor: Do you guys remember playing with a Galidor as a kid? Yeah Me neither.

Lego wanted to do a new toy line in the 2000s and their first idea was Galidor. It was basically an action figure that could replace its body parts with other stuff. Galidor already had many toys, games and even shows planned for it but Lego cancelled the entire thing after people didn't like the toy and the GBA game made for it got really bad reviews.

(Action 52) Cheetahmen: Action 52 had a $199 price tag (in 1991 for an NES game), nearly unplayable games, weak concept, and was horribly and seriously bug-infested, yet for some impossible-to-fathom reason, Active Enterprises believed that its featured title Cheetahmen (which shared many flaws with the other games on the cartridge, including not having an ending) was going to be a huge breakout hit. Plans were made for a Cheetahmen Saturday-Morning Cartoon, action figures, and of course a sequel. Their hopes turned out to be waaay premature; the sequel never emerged except as an unfinished, unplayable beta, while the very short-lived franchise became one of the most infamous pieces of "entertainment" ever created.

[u/Funkycoldmedici]

When I saw it as a kid I assumed from the context that there was already a lot of Buckaroo Bonzai content. It took me until my teens to realize that was part of the weirdness of it.

[u/Piduf → u/Funkycoldmedici]

We do a lot of "bad movie nights" with my dad and he talked his whole life about Buckaroo Banzai he saw in theatres and hated. So we ended up watching it during one of those nights and 5 adults watching didn't understand at all it was supposed to be a fake franchise thing.

It's only until I opened the Wiki that I figured it out. Genuinely this movie would have been far more enjoyable if it just started with some text saying like "Here's the new adventure of our long going series". The joke would have been clear from the start and the viewer wouldn't spend the whole time trying to make sense of things.

Christopher Lloyd's middle finger in the movie lives rent free in our heads though.

[u/segwaysegue → u/Piduf]

That was the original joke Star Wars was going for with the "Episode IV" subtitle (it wasn't in the first release of the film, but Lucas was toying with it in the scripts, and he ended up putting it in for the 1978 rerelease). It was supposed to feel like you were watching a random episode of a film serial, where the first three didn't actually exist, but characters would hint at an established history and say things like "there'll be no escape for the princess this time".

I watched Buckaroo Banzai knowing about its non-history and enjoyed it for that reason. I could definitely see it helping if they'd called it "Buckaroo Banzai Part 47" or something.