Movie Reboots That Had To Be Rebooted Again

Look, the first two Fantastic Four movies are not good. They were made in a different era of superhero films, before the MCU took the world by storm and every studio was looking for their own spandex-clad money-making machines. With a modern lens, they just don't hold up… but they do fare quite a bit better than 2015's Fantastic Four.

Despite having an up-and-coming director in Josh Trank and a cadre of young stars in Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Miles Teller, Fantastic Four was a production disaster and was basically written off before it even came out. So much for relaunching Marvel's first family into a new blockbuster franchise. Thankfully, Marvel Studios got the rights back to the team in 2019.

Unabashedly horrible internet fan discourse aside, rebooting Ghostbusters for a new generation isn't a terrible idea. Look at how well audiences responded to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, for example. All you need is a little Paul Rudd, a dash of top-notch CGI, some nostalgia, as well as a couple of kids from Netflix shows, and you're golden. Paul Feig tried a different tactic in 2016 when he cast comedic stars Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon to bring the series into the 21st century.

This choice was met with, hmm, let's say “severe consternation” from a subset of the franchise's internet fandom and the movie was never really ever able to recover from the subsequent controversy. A planned sequel was scrapped and Afterlife began production a few years later. The lesson? Rude people on the internet can apparently get their way if they're loud enough…

The Planet of the Apes series was one of the indelible franchises of the 1970s. With five theatrical films released between 1968 and 1973 as well as a live-action television show and an animated series, the schlocky sci-fi classic was burned into the social consciousness. Alas, the franchise languished in development hell for decades until the new millennium came around.

Funnily enough, Tim Burton's version of Planet of the Apes, released in 2001, was actually a massive box-office success. It grossed over $362 million worldwide against a budget of around $100 million. Great job, Tim! Franchise kickstarted, right? Well, no. For whatever reason, Fox decided not to continue on with the series and restarted it all over again in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Maybe the middling reviews got to the higher-ups? Maybe they thought people wouldn't continue to buy Mark Wahlberg as an astronaut? Who knows?

For a franchise that has been grasping at straws since 1991, the Terminator series just doesn't know how to die. We suppose they're sort of like an actual Terminator model in that way. No matter how many times you think they're dead in the water, they resurface just to disappoint either the fans or the studio yet again. 2015's Terminator Genisys just might be the franchise's biggest swing at the plate, though.

With a budget of over $150 million, a new lead in Game of Thrones' Emilia Clarke, and a returning Arnold Schwarzenegger, Genisys was meant to reboot the whole thing and inspire a new line of sequels. Alas, it didn't really please critics or audiences and Genisys' sequels quickly went the way of the dodo. It's okay, though! Terminator: Dark Fate was released a few years later and brought Linda Hamilton back after decades away from the series. Everything worked out! Except that movie also faltered at the box office and its sequels were canceled, too. Maybe let this series lie dormant, eh, Hollywood?

Given the enduring popularity of the character, it can be hard to fathom a nearly two-decade-long period where Superman didn't grace the big screen with his presence. 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was such a disaster - it's often regarded as one of the worst major studio films ever made - that Warner Bros. kept the Man of Steel locked in a box until the mid-2000s. By then, Smallville and the DC Animated Universe proved popular enough to bring Superman back to the multiplex.

2006's Superman Returns was WB's $200+ million answer and the pseudo-sequel/reboot does have its fair share of fans. Alas, its box-office return wasn't what Warner Bros. was looking for and they would cancel the planned sequel, giving Zack Snyder free rein to take Kal-El in whatever direction he saw fit over the following decade. Whether Snyder's Man of Steel proved to be a better movie depends on who you ask, just don't call out the director's fans on the internet…

Although 1998's Godzilla was the 23rd movie starring the character, it was the first film featuring the beloved monster that was wholly produced by a Hollywood studio. Maybe that should've been a sign… Despite Godzilla's enduring popularity throughout the years, this film was meant to be a pure reimagining for Western audiences with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin - the minds behind Independence Day - at the helm.

With the full force of a major Hollywood marketing blitz behind it, Godzilla was supposed to be the beginning of a whole new big-time franchise. And then the movie came out and everyone hated it. Although an animated series followed, the rest of the planned films were canned. Legendary Pictures would get the rights to the character later on and create their own reboot with 2014's Godzilla.