Horror franchises typically produce diminishing returns as they go on, both creatively and financially. Once a film studio realizes they have a hit on their hands, they quickly start to churn out sequels at a rapid pace in an attempt to make as much money as possible while the franchise is still popular. When a studio has realized that they have milked a franchise for all it is worth, they sometimes try to try a fresh approach and make an installment that is completely different than what came before it. Other times, studios will try to get ahead of themselves and not make a sequel that is just more of the same. Several of the biggest franchises in horror movie history have attempted this approach, so we thought we would take a look at some of them and see what worked and what didn’t about those films. As many of you may know, sometimes people just want more of the same. If a film strays from the formula too much (as is the case with films like Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning), the backlash from audiences and box office returns* may be so severe that the studio decides to go right back to what they were doing before.
*All box office returns listed below have been adjusted for inflation. So the $22.9 million Friday the 13th: A New Beginning made in 1985 will be written in 2015 dollars: $50.6 million. An inflation calculator was used to convert the numbers.
Remove the Villain
What do you do when you supposedly permanently kill off the centerpiece of your franchise but still want to make a sequel? Leave them out! The two biggest examples (and possibly only, if I’m not mistaken) of this are the aforementioned Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Both films were critically maligned at the times of their release and brought in significantly less box office than their predecessors.
Let’s look at the reasoning behind these films. in 1984, Paramount Pictures was looking to end their beloved slasher franchise which, at the time, had only been around for four years. After touting Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter as, you guessed it, the final chapter in the Friday the 13th series, they thought they would be done with the franchise. Unfortunately (or fortunately from a monetary standpoint), The Final Chapter would go on to gross $75.3 million domestically, making it the third-highest grossing film in the franchise (the highest would be the original film, with $114 million). Paramount couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make another sequel, but they had just killed off their star villain. Their idea was to create a new trilogy without Jason, but still center it around Friday the 13th. Unfortunately, ill will was created between Paramount and audiences when they didn’t make that fact very clear. The trailer legitimately promises Jason’s return, something audiences wouldn’t get until 1986.
Needless to say, audiences were not happy. Despite the fact that the film boasts the highest body count in the franchise (a whopping 21 deaths), the highest amount of bare breasts (director Danny Steinmann got his start in the porn industry) and the most frequent use of drugs, it couldn’t make up for the fact that Jason wasn’t in the film. Maybe fan response would have been better if the advertisements hadn’t been so misleading, but it’s possible fans were never going to accept a Friday the 13th movie without Jason Voorhees.
What is mind-boggling about the direction A New Beginning takes is that a spin-off was heavily insinuated at the end of The Final Chapter, with little Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) giving a mischievous look to the camera in the film’s final shot. Rather than go the logical route and follow Tommy’s descent into madness in A New Beginning, the film makes an abrupt departure and has the killer by a random ambulance driver Roy, who snapped after seeing the corpse of his mentally handicapped son.
The film isn’t highly regarded among horror fans and critics alike, and it’s not difficult to understand why. Overall, the film doesn’t really work. I still find it enjoyable, but this is clearly a case when trying something new didn’t work out for a film franchise. A New Beginning will forever be the red-headed stepchild of the Friday the 13th franchise. While it does have somewhat of a cult following among Friday fans, it’s too often looked over in
The same can be said of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. After Halloween II took in less than half of the original Halloween‘s budget ($66.7 million to the original’s massive $171.5 million), director John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill thought it would be a good idea to turn the franchise into an anthology series. This may have seemed like a good idea (and judging by the quality of the sequels after Season of the Witch, I think it was), but once again, audiences just walked out pissed off. What is odd about their reaction though is that Universal made it blatantly obvious in their advertisements that Michael Myers would not, in fact, be in the film.
Halloween III received largely negative reviews upon its release, though recently it has developed somewhat of a cult following. At the time though, it was pretty much hated by everyone and ended up only bringing in $35.5 million domestically.
Halloween III separates itself from the first two films in the Halloween franchise much better than Friday the 13th: A New Beginning separates itself from the first three films in the Friday the 13th franchise. It’s capable of standing on its own and it’s also a better film. It’s no Halloween, to be sure, but it’s still a solid film that has aged well, which is more than can be said for Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.
Still, box office returns at the time of each film’s release suggest that removing the villain from a franchise is not the best thing to do if you want the film to make money. Since the victims typically rotate in those films, the villain is the only constant in a franchise. If you remove that, then your audience has no relationship to anything in the film. Had those films come out today, audiences probably still would have been disappointed, which is why future horror franchises haven’t attempted this again. Scream switches out its villains, but at the end of the day it’s still Ghostface. Saw, which contains seven films in its franchise killed off its villain at the end of its third installment, but kept him around in flashbacks for the remaining four films.
Overall, it’s probably not a great idea to go this route when deciding to move the franchise in a new direction.