Author Topic: Aborted Franchises  (Read 12912 times)

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Offline R. U. Sirius

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Aborted Franchises
« on: April 07, 2013, 07:28:30 pm »
This thread is to discuss franchises that got cut short before having a real chance to make it, for any reason.. Any kind will do...TV, movies, books, etc. Try to include a little of your thoughts on the franchises you post. Here are a few that I've noted; spoiler alert if you haven't seen these.

1) "The Dresden Files" TV series: Sweet mother of JIM, this series was bad from beginning to end. The only change they made that I liked was having Harry make common items into magical tools; I can understand giving Bob the ability to manifest outside his skull, but there was no need to change him into a ghost. I know that Jim Butcher has gone on record saying that he liked the whole thing, but I can't help thinking it was out of a desperate hope that it would get better as time went on. This one not only deserved to be aborted, it should have been called off the moment someone thought that changing werewolves from Butcher's fairly faithful-to-the-folklore version to standard Hollywood fare was a good idea.

2) The "Inheritance Cycle" movie series: I know that people get down on the books, but I enjoy them. I did NOT enjoy the movie version of "Eragon" in the least. Changes that made no sense (elves that looked exactly like humans? No ears even?), a villain who explicitly reveled in being evil and compressing months of Saphira's growth into an in-story time-lapse, as in, Eragon threw the baby Saphira up in the air to help her learn to fly and she instantly grew up. The only change they made that I liked was Eragon figuring out that Brom was a dragon rider on his own, rather than being caught completely off-guard at his death.

3) "Flash Gordon": When they were making this movie, the cast signed on for a trilogy, like "Star Wars". Unfortunately, only the first movie was ever made. I think it would have been nice to see what the rest of the trilogy would have been like.

4) "Camelot": This Starz series is one of the best versions of the King Arthur mythos that I've ever seen. The liberties they took with the story made sense and were largely attempts to show that the characters weren't perfect demigods. I particularly liked how they showed Arthur growing into his role as king, and made Merlin a utopia-obsessed heroic manipulator. Another franchise cancelled before its time.

Anyone else?
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Offline dpareja

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2013, 08:43:21 pm »
The obvious: Firefly. Screwed over massively by FOX, Serenity ended the way it did because Whedon knew that was it for the franchise.

Another Whedon creation, Dollhouse, was able to finish two seasons and was wrapped up, but I can only wonder what could have been had he had a longer run.

Stargate Universe was cancelled after shooting on its second season wrapped, and ends on a massive cliffhanger.

Star Trek: Enterprise had three crappy seasons, but then they brought in Manny Coto and he did some good work on the fourth season. It's actually pretty good if you ignore the first two episodes and the series finale. What he's said about what he would have done with a fifth season makes me wish the network executives hadn't been so short-sighted.

Crusade was screwed over right from the start thanks to TNT insisting that there be a one-sentence encapsulation of its plot, which would have been wrapped up midway through its second season in order to focus on what J. Michael Straczynski wanted to do with the show in the first place. Unfortunately, the executives meddled a lot in things like costuming and aired episodes way out of order, to the point where there is no order in which to watch the episodes that doesn't lead to at least one continuity problem.

Andromeda had a full five seasons, but Robert Hewitt Wolfe was forced out midway through the second season because he wouldn't turn the show into the Kevin Sorbo show. He later released a summary of the remainder of the series as he had envisioned it, which is very different from how it ended up, mostly because it had characters other than Dylan Hunt doing things.

The Lone Gunmen could have done a lot better had it been made a few years before it was. As it was, The X-Files was declining in popularity by that time and any spinoff wasn't going to do that well. We never really get a proper resolution to its cliffhanger, events in the ninth season of The X-Files merely implying that the characters escaped from their predicament. It did get a wrap-up episode on The X-Files, however, but that episode didn't have Mulder, the X-Files main character most closely associated with the Gunmen.

The other spinoff of The X-Files--though here the connection is a bit more tenuous--Millennium, got three seasons, but each season was markedly different from the others, especially regarding the motivations of the titular group, thanks to each season having different executive producers and nobody (for instance, Chris Carter) being willing to make a definitive call about who they are, what they do and what their aims are. It also got a wrap-up episode on The X-Files, but was similarly unsatisfying.

Things were just getting interesting early in the second season of Tru Calling when it got canned. Its final episode didn't air in North America until years after it was made.
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Offline Witchyjoshy

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2013, 08:53:43 pm »
Swat Kats.  Killed short because the boss at the time didn't like a kid's show that had actual depth and wasn't condescending to its viewers, even though it was amazingly successful and had high ratings.

Re: Inheritance Cycle.  I still think this is bullshit, but the movie makers defended it by saying that they never said that they were elves and dwarves (seriously did you notice that the "dwarves" were as tall as the freaking elves!?)

I liked the movie because of Saphira, and that's about it.  I enjoyed the books, even if they were subpar storytelling, at least it was storytelling.  And he got better as he went, even evolving Eragon from an author avatar to an actual character.  Still, the first book should probably not have been published as it was.

Uh, let's see, what else...

Quest for Glory was almost this.  Sierra stopped funding the games after the fourth one, despite the fact that it completely jarred the overall plotline to do so.  It was only because the fans petitioned for it that Sierra agreed to fund the fifth game, meaning that QFG5 is, as far as I know, the only game that only exists because people wanted it bad enough to petition for it.  Unfortunately it was still heavily rushed, and some of the content they had planned never made it in, and they didn't have the funding to make an expansion to add the missing content like they wanted to.

Now, the American version of Dungeon Fighter Online.  Oh, the original Dungeon and Fighter is still thriving, but due to shitty advertising (which is to say, none at all) and terrible handling of hackers and discipline (it wasn't uncommon for someone to be completely and permanently restricted from trading because the client thought you were hacking, and the DFO staff would essentially say "Oh, sorry about that.  Too bad, we can't do anything about it.") it didn't have the playerbase it needed to thrive.  I foresee Dungeon and Fighter getting an influx of American players using a proxy to connect.  Poor Koreans.

Uh let's see what else...

American Dragon Jake Long.  Executive tried to Meddle as much as they could, but the writers didn't want to play their game.  Then they got a new boss who overhauled the art style (which is still annoying because they changed the bad-ass Western-like dragon to a scrawny eastern-western hybrid who looks like his head should be weighing him down) and HAD THE JONAS BROTHERS DO THE FUCKING THEME SONG.

And you know what?  It was STILL a damn good show.  Even when the executives twisted the writers' arms into putting a loved character on a bus.  And when they finally got to the good point of the plot and the finale of the second season... boom.  They pulled the plug.  And aired the final airing of the finale on a time slot that none of the target audience would be watching TV at.
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Offline Moltar

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2013, 09:04:57 pm »
Pirates of Dark Water - great show, apparently cost to much to make.

Offline Auggziliary

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2013, 09:12:58 pm »
^ That reminds me, I miss Invader Zim.
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Offline Alehksunos

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #5 on: April 07, 2013, 09:21:04 pm »
Alex Kidd

What makes me sad is that there was only one truly worthwhile game in that series (Alex Kidd in Miracle World), and the rest were mediocre games. He was swat from Sega because they wanted a character that stood more against Mario than he was. Sonic the Hedgehog, who replaced him, was the "Dude with the 'tude," while Alex Kidd was just some kid-appeal character. Regardless, he happens to be one of my favorite characters, despite there is not very much about him that makes him "cool" other than now almost everybody knows Sega for Sonic the Hedgehog and knowing that company existed since 1959 and there was a shitload of games they've made before him, that mystique has been developed around him.

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Offline Moltar

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #6 on: April 07, 2013, 10:10:35 pm »
Gargoyles - It was to awesome for disney.
ReBoot- When disney bought ABC they canceled anything not disney, it came back twice but still ended on a cliff hanger.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2013, 10:15:06 pm by Zim! »

Offline Alehksunos

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #7 on: April 07, 2013, 10:18:50 pm »
Oh yes, and Drill Dozer.

Game Freak was going to have a side-franchise to Pokémon, but despite the acclaim by publications, the lousy sales of that game killed the chance of there being a sequel. Such a shame because it was a really great, innovative game that even utilized the underutilized L and R buttons on the Game Boy Advance. Sadly, as much as I wish it, I don't see Game Freak producing another non-Pokémon game after that.

Offline Auggziliary

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #8 on: April 07, 2013, 10:21:11 pm »
I can't remember the name of this cartoon, but it was about a girl who fought monsters. It was like she was the only one who could see them or enter their world or something. I remember she had dark hair.
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Offline FirsthandTuna

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2013, 10:23:39 pm »
Knight of the Old Republic... sort of? They were planning on making three KoTOR games. The second one ended up being developed by Obsidian and the third was abandoned until it turned into The Old Republic.
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Offline nickiknack

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2013, 10:53:46 pm »
Is it too soon to say Star Wars: The Clone Wars??
I seriously have no idea what the hell Disney is doing with what was supposed to be season 6. Last time I heard not all of the episodes they've done up to the point it was cancelled are going to see the light of day, and are only going to include a few of them as bonus material. Not to mention they pushed a bunch of episodes(like the Rush Clovis arc, which includes force choking goodness on Anakin's part) that were suppose to air in season 5 to airing in season 6, before it was cancelled.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2013, 10:56:38 pm by Empress Nicki »

Offline RavynousHunter

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2013, 11:00:21 pm »
Jericho.  I really liked this series a lot, and near the end there, it got really, really interesting and engaging.  Then, BOOM.  Left on a cliffhanger, then, cancelled.  There's been talk about making a movie to tie it all up, but I've heard next to nothing official about it.

Todd and the Book of Pure Evil.  Again, another excellent series that ended on a cliffhanger.  Sure, it'd have been a bit hard to continue, given the way in which it ended, but there were some pretty big loose ends that needed tying up.
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Offline SpaceProg

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #12 on: April 08, 2013, 12:25:37 am »
MegaMan Legends (Video Game) - Got to MML2 the ending of which nigh-on screamed for the line to at least be a trilogy... but none to be had yet.  There was talk of a DS version... then a 3DS version... but it's never panned out.  I'd hate to think that's the last I'll see of that particular MegaMan universe.  Darn MegaMan .Exe and Battle Network...

Jade Empire (Video Game) - Man, that game was beautiful.  Still is to this day.  I hope Bioware can continue with it someday because it's still one of my favorite games. 

Offline Cerim Treascair

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #13 on: April 08, 2013, 12:33:54 am »
Augg:  You're thinking of 'Life and Times of Juniper Lee', which I also miss.

And how has noone mentioned Samurai Jack yet?!

Mind, Tartakovsky is still trying... all the profits from Hotel Transylvania after breaking even and paying everybody is going to trying to make a movie to give the series a proper ending.
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Offline Scotsgit

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Re: Aborted Franchises
« Reply #14 on: April 08, 2013, 02:18:06 pm »
Ultraviolet:  Not the films, but a show on Channel 4, absolutely brilliant, well-written with taut and often thought provoking storylines.  We got one series (screwed by the network).  Basic premise was a government department set up to fight vampires (these ones didn't sparkle, instead the exploded in sunlight.  Which is still a better love story than Twilight).  One of those series that should have gone on for longer than it did.
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