Tentpole Trauma

Director John Boorman was riding high off the success of Deliverance in 1974, but when he couldn’t get his adaptation of Lord of the Rings off of the ground, he opted instead for a mind-bending journ…

The Blade franchise was rolling full force when the third entry, helmed by writer David S. Goyer, hit theaters in 2004. Rumors of star Wesley Snipes’ unhappiness with the franchise’s new direction — …

Hopes were high for celebrated Canadian auteur David Cronenberg’s return to the body horror genre he all but originated, and the trailers for his 2022 film Crimes of the Future promised serious sci f…

Seemingly doomed from the start, the sixth installment of the famed Halloween series, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, shaped up to be a rotten pumpkin for fans when it hit theaters in 1995. He…

One of the most disturbing and distinctive horror franchises of the 80s, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series, with its iconic figurehead Pinhead, was poised to torment moviegoers well into the 90s and b…

If any filmmaker was capable of bringing the horrific insanity of HP Lovecraft to the big screen in the mid 90s, it was John Carpenter. Though not a direct adaptation of any specific Lovecraft work, …

By the mid-eighties the Friday the 13th franchise was all but unstoppable; even part 4’s promise of being “the final chapter” became an empty promise when the box office receipts came in. But despite…

Riding high of a decade of triumph, Disney was hoping to capture the boy demographic with their Jules Verne inspired adventure Atlantis: The Lost Empire. But despite impressive, CG enhanced animation…

Helping to usher in the sword and sorcery boom of the early 80s, Matthew Robbins’ Dragonslayer was a big budget extravaganza that required the financing of both Paramount and Disney studios. But desp…

Riding high off his smash hit The Exorcist, director William Friedkin decided his follow-up would be a big budget remake of Henri Clouzot’s seminal suspense film Wages of Fear. Friedkin’s effort, ine…

Part two of pulp hero appreciation continues with everyone’s favorite purple-suited, jungle dwelling crime fighter, the Phantom! Batman meets Indiana Jones was likely the elevator pitch that sold Par…

Who knows what box office disappointments lurk in the hearts of men? Coming in the — pun intended — shadow of Tim Burton’s mega hit Batman, 1994’s The Shadow tried to capture a similar pulpy magic. B…

Look… up in the sky… it’s a bird… it’s a dame… it’s… a big budget flop! The Superman franchise was starting to stumble by the time Supergirl made her big screen debut in 1984, and despite the star po…

Armed with a high-priced Shane Black script and starring Bruce Willis at the height of his action hero stardom, Tony Scott’s The Last Boy Scout was poised to be a 1991 Christmas season juggernaut. Bu…

Reuniting the team behind Scream for a post-modern take on the werewolf genre seemed like a dream…until it devolved into a nightmare. Years of reshoots and production hell truly earned Wes Craven’s C…

2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman was something of a surprise hit, so it’s no surprise that Universal Studios ordered a sequel. Unfortunately by the time 2016 rolled around both director Rupert Sand…

The film industry was hungry for fantasy franchises after the success of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and while Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series didn’t seem an obvious choice, there …

Hopes were high for the launch of Universal’s “Dark Universe”, a full slate of high profile, interconnected, big budget blockbusters that would revive the classic line-up of Universal Monsters. With …

The Predator franchise was in something of a fallow period by the end of the previous decade, so when it was announced that genre hotshot Shane Black would be resurrecting the series, along with form…