Long-term movie franchises that didn’t pan out

Warner Bros. struggled for years to get the blockbuster modern take on the Arthurian mythos off the ground, but those plans finally came to fruition with the release of Guy Ritchie’s 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. The studio was clearly hoping that Ritchie could breathe new life into King Arthur in the same way he did with another icon of British fiction, Sherlock Holmes. Not only that, the studio planned to use The Legend of the Sword as the launching pad for a saga that would span at least six films and chronicle the various members of Arthur’s Round Table (via Telegraph) before bringing them together in an Avengers-style team movie.

In the era of cinematic universes, Warner Bros. thought they had their next big step, building a massive franchise out of instantly recognizable Arthurian lore. However, the small problem was that King Arthur: Legend of the Sword turned into a legendary box office bomb. Raising just $146 million worldwide on a $175 million budget (via Term), The Legend of the Sword has evolved into a movie that keeps studio executives up at night, rather than a movie that inspires an enduring saga. Due to this box office disaster, any plans for further adventures in the reimagined King Arthur universe were quickly undone.