"Summer Surprise," our annual event where an online randomizer picks our slate of summer movies, kicks off with 1988's attempt to turn the iconic TV horror hostess Elvira into an iconic big screen star...which, obviously, didn't quite work out. But why? With Elvira-mania in full swing in the 80s, what kept the spooky and goofy comedy of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark from connecting with movie audiences? We investigate that question, and also explore the history of the Elvira character and fascina...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 42 min
"Fighting VideoLAMES" concludes, with a look at the adaptation at one of the most popular, financially successful fighting game franchises in the world. But even that pedigree wasn't enough to save the movie from a lengthy struggle to even get released. Disregarded by many fans upset over changes to the source material, and equally disavowed by the game's creators, the Tekken movie is arguably one of the lesser-known cinematic video game adaptations. But does any of that necessarily mean it's ba...
Jun 17, 2025•1 hr 25 min
"Fighting VideoLAMES" continues with a look at the adaptation of Tecmo's Dead or Alive video game franchise. The games, about an international martial arts tournament put on by a mysterious, potentially sinister corporation, are known not only for their fast-paced hand-to-hand combat and colorful roster of characters, but also for their focus on beautiful, badass female characters and, controversially, the "jiggle physics" animation that is used to bring them to life (most infamously seen in the...
Jun 03, 2025•2 hr 6 min
For the latest installment of "Fighting VideoLAMES," we're looking at Capcom's second attempt to bring their beloved Street Fighter II to the big screen. Far from the silly, colorful spectacle of the JCVD/Raul Julia version, this time around Capcom opted for a more grounded, dramatic take, focusing primarily one single Street Fighter character in hopes of kicking off an MCU-like string of sequels ultimately culminating in a big team-up movie. But even with Kristen Kreuk, a hot TV star of the tim...
May 20, 2025•1 hr 31 min
We're kicking off "Fighting VideoLAMES," a four-episode series covering cinematic adaptions of fighting video-games, with the first of two movies based on one of the most iconic, popular fighting games of all time: 1994's Street Fighter . With an all-star cast including Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia (in his final onscreen appearance), produced by the very company that made the video game, and released while Street Fighter II mania was at a high, the movie seemed like a can't-miss proposit...
May 06, 2025•1 hr 41 min
"Mark WahlTURD & the Yucky Bunch" concludes, as the singer-turned-actor-turned-business-mogul and his frequent collaborator, director Peter Berg, leave behind the growing unpredictability of theatrical box office for the apparent comfort and safety (and big paydays) of the streaming world. But even there, you're not entirely safe from the perils of a failed franchise starter, as you'll hear when we discuss 2020's Spenser Confidential, the cinematic adaptation of a popular series of detective...
Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 26 min
The third installment of "Mark WahlTURD & the Yucky Bunch" jumps ahead 15 years to 2018, where Mark Wahlberg, now very much a movie star, is looking to team up with director Peter Berg, his recent favorite collaborator, for a new espionage action thriller. But it's a rocky road to get there, as the movie in question was originally developed as a potential star vehicle for a totally different performer. Why did Mile 22 evolve into something else entirely? How did Wahlberg's "James Silva" go f...
Apr 08, 2025•1 hr 22 min
"Mark WahlTURD & the Yucky Bunch" rolls along into 2003, when a much-in-need-of-a-comeback Mark Wahlberg decided to hop on the then popular trend of remaking classic '60s heist movies, with a modern update of the beloved Michael Caine crime caper The Italian Job . Here, Wahlberg and a crew of fellow eccentric thieves (a "funky bunch," if you will) seek to pull off a heist as revenge against a former compatriot who has done them wrong. The movie's action scenes undeniably started a Mini Coope...
Mar 25, 2025•1 hr 42 min
Here at Failure to Franchise , we don’t like making fun of actors. So trust us when we say our new theme, “ Mark WalhTURD and the Yucky Bunch ,” dedicated to four failed franchise starters from Boston rapper-turned-actor Mark Wahlberg, is, uh, a tribute. First up, 2001’s Planet of the Apes remake, which was meant to be Wahlberg’s first foray into mega-blockbuster leading man territory. Helmed by beloved Hollywood weirdo Tim Burton, and featuring incredible makeup effects by Rick Baker, the film ...
Mar 11, 2025•2 hr
"FebruaRYAN" concludes with a look at 2014's Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit . Twelve years after The Sum of All Fears failed to reignite the Jack Ryan franchise, Paramount tried once again to tell a new Ryan origin story, with a new "hot young star of the moment" leading man in the role. But this particular Ryan movie arrived in a post-MCU world, when the importance of "IP" had become even more evident, and the concept of - say it with us - "cinematic universes" had become all the rage. How did that ...
Feb 25, 2025•1 hr 38 min
It's out with January, and in with "FebruaRYAN." That's right, this month we're taking a look at Tom Clancy's beloved CIA analyst turned reluctant hero, Jack Ryan. After the successes of The Hunt for Red October , with Alec Baldwin as Ryan, and Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger , which saw Harrison Ford take over the role, Paramount Pictures were sure they had a long-running, bulletproof spy-thriller franchise on their hands. And yet, two subsequent attempts to reboot the series were bo...
Feb 11, 2025•1 hr 43 min
"The Mutant GENEuary" wraps up with a movie that is very much not a YA adaptation. In fact, Mutant Chronicles is the long-awaited cinematic adaptation of a popular table-top RPG and video game franchise. After several abandoned attempts to make a big budget studio version of the property, starting in the 90s, fans were finally delivered an independent film adaptation in 2008 that adopted the green-screen aesthetics of recent box-office hits Sin City and 300 . Would fans feel forgiving of, or eve...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 31 min
It's a new year, and a new theme! We're transforming - or should we say "mutating" - the month of January into "The Mutant Gene-uary!" That's right, a month dedicated to mutants, and we're kicking it off with 2020's The New Mutants , the last film released from the original regime of the 20th Century Fox X-Men franchise. Based on a popular X-Men spin-off comic, The New Mutants was meant not only to expand the horizons of what a superhero movie could be, by taking a more horror-based approach, bu...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 47 min
"It's Poddin' Time! We're closing out "Failure to Franchise presents Trev & Chris-tmas" with Trev's gift to Chris - a chance to revisit 2017's big-screen blockbuster reboot of Power Rangers. With a team of up-and-coming young actors as the titular heroes, and a couple Hollywood heavy hitters backing them up in supporting roles - including one with an interesting prior connection to the franchise - it sure seemed like Power Rangers was well-suited to cash in on the overall success of the supe...
Dec 31, 2024•1 hr 49 min
It's once again the most holly, jolly time of the year - "Failure to Franchise presents Trev and Chris-tmas," when we gift each other movies off our long F2F list that we might otherwise not be getting to anytime soon. First up, Chris gifts Trev a notorious box-office and critical flop that Trev has nonetheless always wanted to see ever since it first half-heartedly sputtered into theaters. But...why? Perhaps it has something to do with the film's bizarre origins. After all, how many would-be Ho...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 33 min
In the return of our "Success to Series" spin-off show, we're taking a look at one of the most popular and unique horror franchises of the 2000s, Final Destination . What is it about the series' pitch-black humor and overly-elaborate death scenes that we find so amusing? We try to get to the bottom of this question, while also exploring the original film's surprising TV origins, sharing our favorite deaths from each installment, ranking the individual films, and paying tribute to the late, great...
Dec 03, 2024•1 hr 30 min
"Noyce-vember," our month-long tribute to journeyman director Phillip Noyce, concludes! So how did Noyce follow up the disappointment of 1997's The Saint (which we looked at last time), you ask? Simple - by recruiting one of Hollywood's biggest stars, Denzel Washington, teaming him with a young starlet on the brink of mega-stardom named Angelina Jolie, and putting them together in an adaptation of a recent hit crime-thriller novel. Sounds like a good plan, right? Except he ended up with another ...
Nov 19, 2024•1 hr 49 min
Here at Failure to Franchise, we love a dependable journeyman. And that's why we're kicking off "Noyce-vember," a one month tribute to one of Hollywood's (well, technically, Australia's) most unsung journeymen directors, Phillip Noyce. First up, his 1997 adaptation of The Saint, a popular vigilante character who had already graced the world of literature, radio, film, and - most notably - a beloved '60s television series starring Roger Moore. For this wannabe movie blockbuster version, Noyce rec...
Nov 05, 2024•1 hr 32 min
An iconic character, beloved around the world. A fairly successful box-office haul. And a creative team including Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Kathleen Kennedy, Peter Jackson, and Steven freakin' Spielberg!! What the hell is this movie doing on our show?! That's what we're here to figure out, as "Animation (3D)evastation" concludes with a look at The Adventures of Tintin . Sought after as a movie project by Spielberg as early as 1983, it may have taken over three decades to finally ...
Oct 22, 2024•1 hr 31 min
It's a long held belief in Hollywood that, with only a few exceptions, cinematic adaptations of video games just don't work. So perhaps it's not surprising that the makers of the first big-screen Final Fantasy movie in 2001 thought it would be more beneficial to concentrate on at least creating a groundbreaking technological achievement, rather than worry about sticking to the story elements and tone the popular game series was known for. But when that desire ended up causing a lengthy, over-bud...
Oct 08, 2024•1 hr 26 min
Our "Animation (2D)evastation" month concludes with The Road to El Dorado, Dreamworks Animation's 2000 attempt not only to pay tribute to the classic Bob Hope & Bing Crosby Road To... movies of the past, but also - more importantly - try to beat Disney at their own game with a rollicking, animated musical adventure. And they even went the distance of recruiting Lion King music collaborators Tim Rice and Elton John to try to recapture the same magic again. So what exactly kept Road to El Dora...
Sep 24, 2024•1 hr 12 min
"Animation (2D)evastation," a month dedicated to two 2D animated failed franchise starters, kicks off with a look at 1999's Doug's 1st Movie . Based on Doug , the hit series that started as one of the original "Nicktoons" on Nickelodeon, before being bought by Disney and moving to Disney for its later seasons, Doug's 1st Movie was an attempt to see if the series could make the jump to feature length. Though, to be fair, not necessarily theatrical success, at least at first, since the project was...
Sep 10, 2024•1 hr 19 min
We're wrapping up our "Summer Surprise" series with an unexpectedly timely episode. With Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice coming soon, we're taking a look at one of director Tim Burton's lesser remembered films, one that certainly didn't get a sequel (duh). This YA lit adaptation ( shudder ) is essentially Burton's riff on the X-Men, as Eva Green does her best Professor Xavier impression as the headmistress of a special home for children with unique abilities. Does Burton's unique aesthetic fit well wit...
Aug 27, 2024•1 hr 19 min
"Summer Surprise" continues, with our look at the 2019 reboot of the popular, long-running Child's Play/Chucky franchise. But unlike most reboots, this one had an interesting wrinkle; it was done at a time when the filmmakers behind the original Chucky franchise still had every intention of keeping their series going, as well. So how did this attempt at a separate, parallel Chucky continuity come to be? How did it work to differentiate itself from the other version? And in doing so, did it stay ...
Aug 13, 2024•1 hr 28 min
Our annual "Summer Surprise" series, in which our movies are chosen by an online randomizer, kicks off, with F2F's second Luc Besson. We both loved The Fifth Element , but what do we think of Besson's more grounded, earthbound, 1994 hitman action-thriller, Leon: The Professional ? Remembered as the cinematic debut of a young Natalie Portman, and for an iconic, meme-generating Gary Oldman performance, as well as introducing a global audience to French star Jean Reno, the film remains highly contr...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 33 min
Just because the movies we watch might be considered "failures," doesn't mean the same can be said for our podcast! That's right, it's our 100th episode, a special look back at four year's worth of covering Hollywood mistakes, missteps, and misfires. To celebrate the occasion, we've each picked our favorite movies and performances from the 99 films we've featured so far, as well as our least favorite movies, and we also have special shout-outs for the most frequent directors, screenwriters, and ...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr 30 min
"Summer Sweeps" concludes, with a look at Universal's 2009 attempt to launch another series of big-budget dinosaur adventure movies. This time, they turned to a cult-classic 70s television series from famed producers and puppeteers, Sid & Marty Krofft. But by giving the movie a comedic bent the show never had, and by trading in the practical FX of the original for glossy CGI, did the filmmakers behind Land of the Lost truly pay tribute to the source material, or potentially disrespect it? We...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 34 min
"Summer Sweeps" rolls right along, as we turn our attention to the cinematic adaptation of Get Smart , the popular 60s television spy-spoof from comic legends Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. For the movie version, Hollywood recruited heavy-hitters such as Steve Carrell, Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin, and even Dwayne "Franchise Viagra" Johnson, and were rewarded with a genuine hit. So why didn't the success of the film spawn the hoped-for franchise? What's the deal with straight-to-video spin-off films? H...
Jun 18, 2024•1 hr 23 min
"Summer Sweeps" rolls on, with our look at Michael Mann's 2006 adaptation of his classic '80s detective series, Miami Vice . Coming back to the property that played a big part in making his Hollywood career, and doing so with a recently minted movie star in Colin Farrell and recent Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx, probably seemed like a can't-lose scenario for Mann. But the movie version of Miami Vice was a notoriously chaotic and even dangerous production, before the film itself was released to...
Jun 04, 2024•1 hr 39 min
Our "Summers Sweep" look at failed movie adaptations of classic TV series continues, with one of the more "movies that time forgot" entries we've ever covered: the 1999 update of the late 60s/early 70s, "youth-delinquents-turned-undercover-cops" detective series, The Mod Squad . Despite an impressive cast - including Claire Danes, Omar Epps, Giovanni Ribisi, Dennis Farina, Josh Brolin, and Richard Jenkins - the Mod Squad movie still failed to make much of an impact with critics or audiences at t...
May 21, 2024•1 hr 25 min
