What popular film series will not be revamped, rebooted, sequelized or prequelized?

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Are there any properties that are safe from Hollywood's incessant and increasing desire to extend or reboot? Obviously nobody is going to make a new Hudson Hawk or John Carter, so limit your consideration to movies that were legitimate hits or cult classics. The most likely candidates would be instances where the original author/creator retains a good deal of control over the franchise.

Lord of the Rings -- not sure on this one. The Tolkien family is super-protective of their rights and hates the Peter Jackson movies, so they will probably never sell off the rights to other Middle-Earth novels. I'm not sure if WB/New Line owns the rights to Hobbit/LOTR in perpetuity, and if so they could simply re-make LOTR again (this time - three movies per book!).

Harry Potter -- JK Rowling holds the keys to the castle. She's developing a new film in the same universe, but not a direct prequel. As with LOTR, it seems uncertain whether or not WB could simply remake the Potter/Hogwart's books but it seems unlikely that they would be able to do prequels or extensions of the story. At the very least Rowling seems like she is done with Potter and Hogwart's, though who knows what her descendants may allow.

EDIT: Thought of a couple more possibilities:

Nightmare Before Christmas -- I'm not sure if this is controlled by Disney on Tim Burton. Burton claims that he has talked Disney out of doing a Broadway musical version, and also talked them out of doing sequels involving other holidays (Nightmare Before Easter, etc). I'm not sure if that means he actually retains ownership of the franchise and its characters, or if he's just somehow able to convince executives that the integrity of the original is more important than new revenue. In a world where Cars 2 exists, this seems unlikely. Perhaps he just threatens to denounce and badmouth any attempt to extend the series/brand.

Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Chronicles -- I think Anne Rice is probably done with Hollywood, after the way Interview/Lestat films turned out.
 
rexor0717 said:
The Last Airbender killed any hope of a good Avatar movie.
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Goddamn, this one really hurt retroactively for me.

I saw the movie first, and in morbid curiously had to know what kind of source material it was, cause what the hell did I just watch? In my entire movie going experience I never had such a crowd "boo" at the end before, wow. I ended up completely felling in love with the animated series and in turn grew extremely venomous towards the film, while before it was an awkward tolerance at best.
 
Nightmare Before Christmas -- I'm not sure if this is controlled by Disney on Tim Burton. Burton claims that he has talked Disney out of doing a Broadway musical version, and also talked them out of doing sequels involving other holidays (Nightmare Before Easter, etc). I'm not sure if that means he actually retains ownership of the franchise and its characters, or if he's just somehow able to convince executives that the integrity of the original is more important than new revenue. In a world where Cars 2 exists, this seems unlikely. Perhaps he just threatens to denounce and badmouth any attempt to extend the series/brand.

Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Chronicles -- I think Anne Rice is probably done with Hollywood, after the way Interview/Lestat films turned out.
 
Back to the Future - It is what it is because the series was made in the time that it was. Lightning never strikes twice.
 
border said:
Nightmare Before Christmas -- I'm not sure if this is controlled by Disney on Tim Burton. Burton claims that he has talked Disney out of doing a Broadway musical version, and also talked them out of doing sequels involving other holidays (Nightmare Before Easter, etc). I'm not sure if that means he actually retains ownership of the franchise and its characters, or if he's just somehow able to convince executives that the integrity of the original is more important than new revenue. In a world where Cars 2 exists, this seems unlikely. Perhaps he just threatens to denounce and badmouth any attempt to extend the series/brand.
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Nah he just threatens to never have his wife or Jhonny Depp in a Disney movie forever.
 
Valhelm said:
Pirates of the Caribbean is gone for good.
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Well they will make at least 2 more movies. By then I think public interest will lie on a new horizon. They don't have to reboot it to maintain rights, so yeah it will probably die. Just not yet.
 
FUBAR McDangles said:
I had no idea the Tolkien family disliked the Peter Jackson films.
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I don't follow the issue too closely. My understanding is that they are purists that despise any changes to the source material, or any exclusions of material they deem important. No one hoping to adapt a Tolkien novel to film could ever win with them, which is why I see it as pretty unlikely that they will ever work with Hollywood again. The only question is whether or not the film rights to Hobbit/LOTR will ever revert back to them.
 
Scullibundo said:
The Before Trilogy. Though I could see Linklater perhaps returning for another sequel. Nobody will be rebooting that shit.
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That one actually occurred to me, but I didn't mention it since I don't think you could really call them popular films. I remember reading that Linklater & Company jokingly refer to it as "the lowest grossing trilogy of all time".

If we're going to talk indie though, I doubt anyone will ever touch Kevin Smith's Jersey trilogy.
 
IdreamofHIME said:
Rowling owns shit, she sold it to WB a decade ago. They will remake the series within 15 years.
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She still owns it all, she just allowed WB to license the film and merch rights. She still has veto power over tons of stuff, up to and including approval of casting and major behind the camera roles, which she mainly secured to guarantee that it would remain a primarily British production. Rowling still has more than enough control over the HP franchise, and any remakes would have to be approved by her or whoever inherits the HP estate after her death.
 
FUBAR McDangles said:
I had no idea the Tolkien family disliked the Peter Jackson films.

That's crazy.
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They don't all.

Christopher Tolkein claims that his father's work was turned into "an action movie aimed at teenagers", and that Peter Jackson has cheapened the seriousness of the text. He believes that the films have displaced the books in terms of popularity and that the films have "reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing."

In contrast, Royd Tolkien is a huge fan of the films and had a cameo as one of Faramir's rangers in Return of the King.
 
I don't think Back to the Future will be touched again, at least not while Michael J Fox is alive. I honestly think that he's so beloved that it would be a factor in keeping cynical execs from trying to redo that series, even if they can convince themselves they can update the time periods. There'd be such a backlash, and yeah, creatively, it's very 80s, in the best of ways.

re: The Nightmare Before Christmas -- Burton doesn't control it. He created the concept while working for Disney and they've owned it ever since. He tried asking for it back in the late 80s, but instead Disney eventually turned around and committed to giving him (and Selick!) creative freedom to make a feature. Disney's just playing nice since Burton has made them a lot of money with other movies.
 
With all the rampant 80's/90's nostalgia that's running around today, I imagine that there have been executives drooling over the idea of a new Back to the Future where Marty travels to the recent past and laughs about giant cell phones and dot-matrix printers.

The major problem is that it'd be almost impossible to recast both Marty and the Professor. But I imagine people thought the same thing about recasting Willy Wonka.

Dan said:
re: The Nightmare Before Christmas -- Burton doesn't control it. He created the concept while working for Disney and they've owned it ever since. He tried asking for it back in the late 80s, but instead Disney eventually turned around and committed to giving him (and Selick!) creative freedom to make a feature. Disney's just playing nice since Burton has made them a lot of money with other movies.
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I'm surprised that they have shown so much restraint, then. I suppose the cash-ins will probably start when Burton either dies or retires, though. All the heavy merchandising they do with Nightmare Before Christmas seems pretty calculated to keep the franchise alive in the minds of kids and consumers.
 
Smokey and the Bandit

Okay, okay, that hasn't been popular in 30 years, but it was big once.

And similarly, the Any Which Way But _____ series (Clint Eastwood and that orangutan). Two of his biggest movies, actually, in terms of money made.

And even his Dirty Harry movies probably won't get remade. Nor will Charles Bronson's Death Wish.
 
The Godfather seems like the "untouchable one" in hollywood. No one is dumb enough or has the balls to seriously reboot it right now.
 
The Dollars Trilogy. The Good, the Bad and the Weird doesn't really count as a revitalization or reboot — it's what A Fistfull of Dollars is to Yojimbo. no legit director will want to try directly to live up to those considered how acclaimed they are.
 
Airplane!
The original is a masterpiece. The sequel was a disaster.
No one will touch that property because they have no chance in either direction.

Spaceballs, as well.
 
Police Academy( the tv series doesn't exists!)
Zombi
CHUD
Toxic Avenger
Porkys
That one horror series starring killing puppets
That other horror series with metal flying balls thingy
I'm surprised Hollywood didn't touch campy 80s horror films yet lol
 
2001 and 2010

2001-a-space-odyssoy-2010-the-year-we-make-front-cover-81038.jpg
 
Valhelm said:
They don't all.

Christopher Tolkein claims that his father's work was turned into "an action movie aimed at teenagers", and that Peter Jackson has cheapened the seriousness of the text. He believes that the films have displaced the books in terms of popularity and that the films have "reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing."

In contrast, Royd Tolkien is a huge fan of the films and had a cameo as one of Faramir's rangers in Return of the King.
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Interesting. Wonder what they think of LOTRO. Guessing they are fine with it since a) it's pretty accurate apparently and b) Turbine are still making content.
 
Spring-Loaded said:
The Dollars Trilogy. The Good, the Bad and the Weird doesn't really count as a revitalization or reboot — it's what A Fistfull of Dollars is to Yojimbo. no legit director will want to try directly to live up to those considered how acclaimed they are.
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I hope you're right. I can't imagine anyone thinking they can pull this off with someone else in Clint Eastwood's place.

Anyone think Indiana Jones will be re-made without Ford?
 
The Naked Gun suggestions got me thinking that yeah, probably a lot of comedies are safe/immune from sequels or rebooting. It's easy to hire a writer to re-hash the plot of an old action movie, but comedies are so much more reliant on acting and quality writing that it's difficult to re-create what made the original so great. Plus comedies tend to be somewhat dated or stuck in their own era. The value of their "brand" doesn't really translate as a result. There doesn't seem to be much point in making a new Police Academy or Porky's or American Pie. The story of the original films are so non-unique and indistinct that they can be translated into a new property pretty easily, and there is little to be gained by tying them to old films.

I guess there have been attempts at comedy reboots, sequels, and prequels (Dumb and Dumberer, Son of the Mask, The Threee Stooges, straight-to-video American Pie flicks). The responses to those films have been so tepid that I can't imagine anyone is chomping at the bit to do a new version of an old comedy.
 
Zushin said:
Interesting. Wonder what they think of LOTRO. Guessing they are fine with it since a) it's pretty accurate apparently and b) Turbine are still making content.
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Knowing what I know of of christopher he wouldnt like it. The focus on combat would turn him off and he would dispise some of the ideas they added to the lore.

Keep in mind he probably knows almost as much of the lore as his father did. His father woyld often send drafts to him for consultation. Not to mention all of the scouring chris did while working on HoME.

With regards to the Silmarillion, an adaptation could be made once it becomes public domain.
 
The Godfather. The originals have aged magnificently and they sort of already did the unnecessary sequel thing.
 
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