Least promising Sequel/Remake/Franchise/IP-based flick of 2025

"Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr." clinches my vote.

Not going with Now You See 3?

Not seeing anything from here, hmm, maybe it's in a lower league.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twisted_Childhood_Universe

Now You See Me 3 might be the most puzzling, yes. Who's asking for this?

Not even the guy who wrote the books can get the Witcher right. For all their sins, you do gotta hand it to CD Projekt Red for nailing the games

Naked Gun Remake? Surely you can't be serious

xxxp

Was going off this list, which didn't include Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2025

Also had to cut some video game adaptation (Until Dawn) to get the list down to just 50.

Tron: Ares, because I have no interest in "Tron but with Jared Leto".

A Looney Tunes movie? I might actually want to see that.

The Jurassic Park franchise has been thrown in a bin, and is now dripping with discarded beans and tin can juice.

The Naked Gun reboot I am cautiously optimistic for, because there are at least some decent names involved.

pls call it Now You Three Me

Wolf Man is no The Invisible Man ftr

an abundance of options here. at first i was leaning Freakier Friday, which initially irritated me since the fourth remake of the same concept really does not need its own special title. now I'm more annoyed to discover it is actually a lega-sequel to the 2003 film, reuniting Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. in theory that means it could actually tread new thematic ground, but this whole trend of quasi-remakes with the same old casts is generally pretty grim.

live action Lilo & Stitch and Snow White are also contenders, both for carrying on this horrible Disney remake conveyor belt, and specifically for doing it to films that really are distinctive/magical/special to begin with. presumably they'll be just as bad and pointless as all the others tho.

Superman might actually be good, and feels less superfluous than some of these because the concept is pure gold and yet has somehow only got two solid movies over all these years. same with Fantastic Four except it's never even had one good movie.

Avatar 2 was watchable and often lovely - seems reasonable to think 3 might do the same. at least those are just regular old sequels, with the same maniacal author continuing the ongoing story of the main characters, rather than disguised remakes or exercises in trademark extension disguised as "universe building."

James Schamus remaking The Wedding Banquet with a new director is a truly odd decision to me, but almost plausible as a creative and commercial proposition ... I haven't seen the original but from my understanding of it, it seems lik you could actually do new and relevant things with that basic story in 2025, and probably reach a huge audience that will never ever have heard of the Ang Lee version. huh. i should get around to the first one i guess.

in the end, come on this has to be Jurassic World: Rebirth. a "rebirth" coming in just three years after capping a supposed "trilogy " with a film absolutely nobody liked, which already tried to juice audience interest by bringing in the beloved cast of the 1993 film, following an appealingly demented but similarly misbegotten second entry in this generally misbegotten series of sequel/remakes. i mean who are they trying to fool? the very title proclaims recycled franchise dross.

The Bride! (remake of Bride of Frankenstein)

Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal! Starring Christian Bale as Frankenstein's monster! Features "big dance numbers"!

This could go either way.

1997’s Anaconda isn’t a movie that one would typically think of as a comedy, but that’s how Sony Pictures is reimaging the franchise with comedy stalwarts Paul Rudd and Jack Black and director Tom Gormican.

I think this is my vote.

my Anaconda don’t want none unless it’s got fun, hon.

A CIA-focused FBI spinoff is in the works at CBS.

Source: @DEADLINE pic.twitter.com/Tqr6QkhNdr

— CBR (@CBR) January 22, 2025

where's 28 Semesters Later?

They should have at least waited 28 years after the original film, but strike while the iron is hot I guess.

Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal! Starring Christian Bale as Frankenstein's monster! Features "big dance numbers"!

Barbie is gonna have a lot to answer for, huh?

How to Train Your Dragon (live action)

Kinda leaning toward this one just because I hate the fact that they call these photorealistic CGI remakes "live action" — no they're fucking not! At best, if there's a live human in there interacting with the motion-capture or CGI characters, it's a Roger Rabbit type deal.

Side note: I have no idea who Henry Danger is, but I initially misread that as Henry Darger: The Movie, and that could have some potential, but in the current climate around sexuality it would probably result in torch-wielding mobs burning down theaters.

The live action how to train your dragon is at the very least the one that made me roll my eyes the hardest when I saw a trailer at the movies recently, though I see on this list that there is also a Lilo & Stitch live action movie, which seems like an even worse idea.

My kids are really excited about the Dog Man movie (even my 16 year old wants to see it, I guess he has fond memories of the books), so that will almost certainly be our next family outing to the movies when it comes out next week.

Great opportunity to sell some Dog Star Man tickets

voting for jurassic world, that series has been creatively bankrupt for two decades now

im sure enough other people will vote for the totally pointless how to train your dragon live action

I did feel some alarm seeing the HTTYD trailer and realizing we're at the point where only fifteen years need separate the animated movie and the CGI-animated remake. Of course, virtually every single one of these things has been so irksomely wrong-headed in terms of what might connect with an audience emotionally or catch hold of a child's imagination. (David Lowery's Pete's Dragon was nice, but had the benefit of starting from exceedingly mediocre source material.)

I love these polls, voted Smurfs

Somehow the fourth Smurfs film and *third" attempt at a Smurfs series since 2011.

Maybe the combination of Rihanna as Smurfette and Kurt Russell as Papa Smurf will finally unlock the magic chemistry they've been seeking all this time.

They should make a live action Smurfs movie with real Smurfs.

Den Of Thieves 2 supposedly a trashy attempt at a Melvillian gangster film so I approve, in principle anyway.

New Looney Tunes supposed to be good too.

I was going to say Star Trek: Section 31 looks promising based on the cast (Tatiana Maslany, Paul Giamatti, Tig Notaro, Robert Picardo) but that's the also upcoming Starfleet Academy.

What angers me about the Smurfs these days is that both the original Franco-Belgian comics and the 80's tv show were known as Os Estrumpfes in Portugal, a tweaking of the original Les Schtroumpfs. But ever since Neil Patrick Harris got involved they are marketed as "os Smurfs" back home and now there's a generation that doesn't even know what an Estrumpfe is. Society is in the gutter.

What angers me about the Smurfs these days

thank you for this

Oh they will know what Estrumpfe is, I assure you

these "live action" remakes make me a bit sad. as a kid who really only used to enjoy cartoons and had no interest in watching live-action anything it's a bit "just because you can doesn't mean you have to" for me

only fifteen years need separate the animated movie and the CGI-animated remake

Nine years and eight months, if Moana hits its release date.

a "rebirth" coming in just three years after capping a supposed "trilogy " with a film absolutely nobody liked

This part's funny to me. We have the Jurassic Park trilogy, the Jurassic World "trilogy", and a new sequel which drops the World cast and is pitched as being a return to the "tone" of the Park trilogy. The pattern would seem to suggest picking a new name for a new trilogy, but nope, it's Jurassic World Rebirth.

Jurrasic Park: World: Rebirth 3: The Jurassicaning

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

is this like muppet babies?

Is that really Saw ELEVEN??
(sorry I don't read Roman)

Where have the years gone?

How can the same thing happen to the same guy 11 times

Saw XI vs. Ocean's Eleven

There's also Greta Gerwig's Chronicles of Narnia reboot

but that's promising!

Not 'til 2026.

ah

and now apparently Egger's sequel to Labyrinth

Looking forward to E.T. 2 in 2028

remaking a movie thats defined by a specific actor and not really anything else about it is ???

are they going to remake austin powers next

"We need DNA from the three biggest dinosaurs."

This is going to be highly intellectual, I see.

At least the Jaws sequels had the good sense to stop after four.

Although tbf that was after the Michael Caine one where the shark followed them half way across the world to exact its revenge

And inspired a classic Caine zinger!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P4CLrC2xLw

Lego Pharrell movie scrapped in post-production.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/pharrell-williams-michel-gondry-scrap-musical-golden-post-production-1235093027/

“When all of us got into the editing room we collectively decided there wasn’t a path forward to tell the version of this story that we originally envisioned. We appreciate all the hard work of the talented cast and crew. While we’re disappointed, we can’t deliver this film, we have incredible partners at Universal and will collaborate in a different capacity again soon,” Williams and Gondry said in a statement.

“Golden,” originally titled “Atlantis,” was a musical set during Williams’ coming-of-age years in the 1970s growing up in Virginia Beach. It starred Kelvin Harrison Jr., Halle Bailey, Brian Tyree Henry, Janelle Monáe, Missy Elliott, Quinta Brunson, Anderson .Paak, Jaboukie Young-White, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in what would’ve been her first role since winning an Oscar for “The Holdovers.” Universal had even set a release date of May 5.

The Lego Pharrell movie already came out, that appears to be something different

Noted. Taking it over here: one time there were two magician movies

Walter Chaw on Snow White:

In the case of live-action Disney reboots, it isn’t a matter of whether they’re a hate crime, but how egregious a hate crime they are. We expect dead-eyed CGI renderings of what were once astonishingly evocative hand-drawn miracles. We expect the shameless tokenism that sees race as a costume white people take on and off at their diversity balls and the feckless, tossed-off malaise that mercenary money-grabs can never entirely shake. Despite all that, despite the built-in stench of failure that attends these spectacles like miasmas of bluebottle flies on gas-bloated corpses, the Mouse keeps pumping them out, beholden to an accounting ledger they bind like a script. The goal isn’t art or expression, nothing so lofty. The goal is a percentage–a shareholder-appeasing PowerPoint presentation delivered by a board of directors, not a single one of whom would otherwise be trusted to form a graceful turn of phrase or produce something that could flower into a product that is culturally significant in a nurturing way. They are stripminers, colonizers of your childhood, overburdening resources for personal gain. Their legacy will be how they took our memories and replaced them with further evidence that there is nothing good the dullest, emptiest people in the world won’t exploit for profit.

I'd never heard of the first one, but I saw the trailer for "The Accountant 2," and it looks to be about Ben Affleck as ... an autistic hitman? Looks abysmal/embarrassing.

Watch the first one

The first one came out in 2016.

First one is very good, Anna Kendrick should get a surprise badass movie like Bob Odenkirk.

Yeah, the first one was really good. This one looks bad.

Highest 2 Lowest is an upcoming American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Spike Lee and written by William Alan Fox. It is an English-language reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 Japanese film High and Low

I somehow missed that there was a new Karate Kid despite including it in this poll four months ago. Walter Chaw:

Karate Kid: Legends is like the IKEA instruction booklet for making a Karate Kid movie: a marvel of abbreviated, gestural storytelling that should be taught in schools as an example of what a perfectly structured script looks like. It’s screenwriting as train scheduling: everything arrives on time, more or less; nothing crashes; nobody is inconvenienced overly; and then you’re home. And unless someone threw up or showed you their dick in the theatre, you will never remember having taken this trip. Karate Kid: Legends is an example of how a film everyone worked hard on, probably in good faith, could end up in one of those giant bins at Walmart mere weeks from now, held up by an astonished-looking 50-year old wondering how in the world they made another one of these without him even knowing about it. What is it? #20? No, sir, it’s only #6, unless you count the “Cobra Kai” episodes, in which case it’s #71. America. Where nothing is so good you can’t mass produce it until it has all the friction, character, and purpose of a suppository. Anyway, Karate Kid: Legends leaves the door open for a sequel.

or showed you their dick in the theatre,

What an absolutely bizarre thing to throw in a movie review.

I don't know what going to the movies in America is like these days.

or what kind of movie theatres the critic is frequenting

ppl love to post walter chaw on this board. he is a godawful writer afaict

my 10 year old son is extremely stoked for this new karate kid movie, so his opinion that nobody wants it is anecdotally a big load of bollocks

tbf there is a 10 year old stoked for every failed blockbuster in living memory. sometimes they thrn grow up and get very adamant on social media that said failed blockbuster is a neglected masterpiece.

karate kid was steeped in the 1980s martial arts cultural boom. i don't know what appeal it has now.

Martial Arts is still around

Cobra Kai was a pretty popular streaming series too.

I somehow missed that there was a new Karate Kid despite including it in this poll four months ago.

Gregg Turkington did an AMA on reddit and addressed this very confusing entry to the Karate Kid canon!

https://www.reddit.com/r/OnCinemaAtTheCinema/comments/1kqmi3b/gregg_turkington_movie_expert_founder_vfavhs_ama/mt6uf0s/

kabekew 101 points 8 days ago*

I'm confused about the upcoming "Karate Kid: Legends" (2025, 94 mins) and where it fits in the series. There was Karate Kid (1984, 126 mins), Karate Kid II (1986, 113 mins), Karate Kid III (1989, 112 mins), but then it went Next Karate Kid (1994, 107 mins) and back to Karate Kid (2010, 140 mins). So is Karate Kid: Legends (2025, 94 mins) really Karate Kid II again?

[–]PopcornClassicExpertOfficial Account 159 points 4 days ago

This one is Karate Kid 6, because of the New characters and situations. The Karate Kid from 2010 also had New charaters and situations, so it was not a remake, it was a sequel. There has never been a remake.

I Train UFC Kid just doesn't have the same ring as Karate Kid

Despite maintaining the original title, the 2010 remake does not feature karate, which is from Okinawa (Japan), but focuses on the main character learning kung fu in China. Chan told interviewers that film cast members generally referred to the film as The Kung Fu Kid, and he believed the film would only be called The Karate Kid in America, and The Kung Fu Kid in China.[11] This theory held true in the People's Republic of China, where the film is titled The Kung Fu Dream (Chinese: 功夫梦).[12]

Naked Gun Remake? Surely you can't be serious

― the wedding preset (dog latin), Wednesday, 22 January 2025 23:05 (four months ago)

I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.

The Kung Fu Dream II: Legends of the Karate Kid Part 6

i love new characters and situations

with movies like tom cruise in them, you cant lose!

hopefully the first of many Karate Kid movies to come, congratulations to Jackie Chan

The trailer for the King of the Hill sequel is not promising. Some real easy gender and vegan jokes that feel dumber than the original series.

The trailer for the remake of war of the roses was not as terrible as I would assume. I mean it looks kinda bad but I chuckled a couple of times. Benelux crumblybum is awful in it

There was a Beavis & Butthead revival that passed unnoticed that was actually pretty good!

B&B revival was hilarious imo, haven’t seen this trailer but a 2025 king of the hill with aged characters is a much thornier proposition for a hundred reasons

Nu Cat in the Hat looks dire. New Now You See Me looks double (triple) dire.

coming in 2026…air bud returns

https://ew.com/air-bud-returns-in-2026-nearly-three-decades-after-the-last-film-11778721

The ILX hivemind was right about The Naked Gun. The creators had lots of love for the original, and no end of worthy targets. But the finished product is sadly forced. One person in my theater (who I suspect had not been born when the originals came out laughed all the way through, but....

And if you go against my recommendations, do sit through the credits to the second stinger. My love for Weird Al continues unabated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDHgHTho7gs

yay it's the Blair Martian Project

Just came out of Naked Gun, had a great time! Can't remember laughing so much in the cinema for ages, not even the latest Hong Sang Soo. I think the ppl here who didn't like it have probably just forgotten about Fergie.

That trailer for 'War of the Worlds' looks very bad. It's like the creative team thought the key to reaching a contemporary audience is to make everything look like a video game and a Tik-Tok played on a smartphone.

I’m currently imagining a marquee that reads:

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Predator: Badlands

Now You Springsteen: Now You Don't

2 Spring 2 Steen

Springster Things

Bruce Before Springsteen