There are plenty of franchises out there that only really have one movie that works, but it was profitable enough to get itself at least one follow-up that didn’t really advance what the initial film established. Sometimes, though, a dud follow-up shouldn’t have marked the end for a franchise. There was still some potentially exciting terrain the IP could have walked. Then there are movies that received an excellent sequel, yet nothing has been heard of them since. Lastly there are movie franchises that never had a great entry, yet it seems as though there could be one if the right creatives were put in charge of making it a reality.

What follows is a mix of all three categories. What unites them is that they’re franchises that haven’t released any big screen (or direct to streaming) entries for at least 10 years. They deserve another shot at success.

7) Sinister

image courtesy of gramercy pictures

Scott Derrickson’s Sinister was a massive hit in 2012, netting $87.7 million worldwide against a price tag of just $3 million. Three years later, Sinister 2 came out and was profitable in its own right, earning $54.1 million against just $10 million, but a multiple of 5.4 is nothing compared to a multiple of just over 29, and we have yet to see a Sinister 3.

Here’s the thing, though. If Sinister 2 had been good instead of being a jump scare fest devoid of the original film’s unsettling atmosphere, we could have gotten more time with Bughuul. But the drop from the first film’s 64% to the second film’s 14% was deserved, so it seems as though one bad sequel was enough to entirely undo the good will earned by Derrickson’s hit.

Stream Sinister on Hulu and Sinister 2 on Netflix.

6) Hitman

image courtesy of 20th century studios

As mentioned in the intro, some franchises never have a truly great entry and end up dying a swift death before they even get started. Take, for instance, the two Hitman movies which, even with Timothy Olyphant and then Rupert Friend in the lead role of Agent 47, didn’t do much to set the world on fire.

The first film has a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and Hitman: Agent 47 has a paltry 8%. Granted, neither film is quite as awful as those scores would indicate, but it’s not hard to see why they were so dismissed critically. Even still, as anyone who has played the games knows, 47 actually has a pretty compelling origin story and, in the more modern trilogy, a nice character arc. If it doesn’t go the bland route of the first film or the too-silly route of the reboot movie, it could work.

Stream Hitman on Starz.

5) A Nightmare on Elm Street

image courtesy of new line cinema

Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t just the best slasher of 1984, it outright changed the game for the subgenre. And Robert Englund stayed on as the iconic Freddy Krueger for five sequels, a meta sequel, and a crossover with Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees.

Then, the music video-like monstrosity that was the 2010 reboot tried and failed to revive it all with Jackie Earle Haley taking over the knife gloved role. It didn’t pan out, and we haven’t seen anything of Freddy since. Jason is about to be rebooted in a major way, so it would be great to get one final Englund fronted Freddy movie.

4) The LEGO Movie

image courtesy of warner bros. pictures

The Lego Movie may not have received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature Film (somehow), but it did extremely well with critics and made $470.7 million against a price tag of at most $65 million. And, of course, that was a big enough success to kick off a string of Lego movies. However, none of them matched the profitability or critical praise heaped on the 2014 movie. The Lego Batman Movie did well in 2017, but The Lego Ninjago Movie lost money that same year. Then, in 2019, we got the second mainline movie, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, which didn’t fall as short as Ninjago, but still only made $199 million against $99 million and got 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, twelve points less than its predecessor.

It seems as though the two films released between The Lego Movie and The Second Part took away the novelty of the IP, effectively ending the mainline franchise at just two movies. We should have gotten both a The Lego Movie 3 and a The Lego Batman Movie 2. If not those, we should have at least had Will Arnett reprising his role as Batman in a TV series. Alas, it seems Pharrell’s Piece by Piece (which isn’t connected to any of the aforementioned movies but is Lego nonetheless) seems to have put any hopes for this to bed.

Stream The Lego Movie on Vix and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part on Netflix.

3) 21 Jump Street

image courtesy of sony pictures releasing

21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street both received fantastic reviews from critics and they both made about four times their production budget, but the franchise still ended at two entries. On one hand, this is probably a good thing. Both films are hysterical and have emotional story beats that actually land, and it would be a shame to have their legacy tarnished by a third film that doesn’t reach the high bar they set. Really, the only way that it should be made is if Phil Lord and Christopher Miller return as the directors, but even then, it would probably be better to see them helm a different movie that capitalizes on the razor-sharp chemistry shared by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.

There have been efforts to get a third film off the ground. One was supposed to be a pretty straightforward sequel again pairing Hill and Tatum and one was supposed to be a female-led spin-off, but the one that got the most talk was a crossover with the Men in Black franchise. Thank goodness that didn’t happen, because it would have taken 22 Jump Street‘s final joke, which listed a bunch of increasingly ridiculous fake sequels, and made it a ridiculous reality.

Stream 21 Jump Street on Paramount+ and 22 Jump Street on YouTube TV.

2) Ride Along

image courtesy of universal pictures

The first Ride Along got an 18% on Rotten Tomatoes and Ride Along 2 got a 15%, so it was never a critical darling. But the first one made over $150 million against $25 million and the second one, while not as successful, still tripled its $40 million price tag.

In a world where studios aren’t putting out comedies at a remotely consistent frequency, it’s surprising these relatively tonally safe PG-13 movies didn’t keep going. Ice Cube and Kevin Hart’s chemistry was rock solid in these two movies, and it’s not as if either of their characters retired and walked into the sunset for good at the end of Ride Along 2. There was some effort to make a third movie about a year after the sequel debuted, yet nothing ever came of it.

Stream Ride Along and Ride Along 2 on Peacock.

1) 300

image courtesy of warner bros. pictures

300 was an influential comic book movie that really helped put Zack Snyder on the map. And, after the cancellation of his sequels to Army of the Dead and the premature conclusion of his Rebel Moon trilogy over on Netflix, there has been word that he might return to 300 for a TV series that will serve as a prequel to both his movie and 300: Rise of an Empire (which was itself a prequel).

It makes sense that 300 is yet to be fully dead in the water. While Rise of an Empire‘s 45% on Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t quite as solid as 61%, it indicates that the film ultimately was in the same vicinity of quality. And while its $337.6 million worldwide haul (against $110 million) wasn’t as strong as the first film’s $456 million against $65 million, it still made the film profitable. The question is, considering Rise of an Empire came out over 10 years ago, is the audience still there for this slo-mo swords-and-sandles franchise?